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•‘the ENGLISHMAN HALTED AT THE THKESHOLD. JUS EYE, J'ASSING OVER 
THE FIGURE OF SAVARIN READING IN THE WINDOW-NICHE, RESTED UPON 
RAMEAU AND ISAURA SEATED ON THE SAME DIVAN.” 


VOL. II., p. 12, 




CJe iLorti iigtton iEtiition 


THE PAHISIAHS 


BY 

EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1875 

7r 









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/■f ►. 





PEEFATOET NOTE. 


(BY THE AUTHOR’S SON.) 


“ The Parisians” and “ Kenelm Chillingly” were begun about 
the same time, and had their common origin in the same 
central idea. That idea first found fantastic expression in 
“ The Coming Race ;” and the three books, taken togetherj 
constitute a special group distinctly apart from all the other 
works of their author. 

The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false 
social respectabilities ; the humor of his later ones is a protest 
against the disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought 
to promote Social sincerity and the free play of personal 
character; by the last, to encourage mutual charity and 
sympathy among all classes on whose inter-relation depends 
the character of‘ society itself. But in these three books, his 
latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and exclu- 
sive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed 
to him the perilous popularity of certain social and political 
theories, or a warning against the influence of certain intel- 
lectual tendencies upon individual character and national life. 
This purpose, however, though common to the three fictions, 
is worked out in each of them by a different method. “ The 

1 * 


v 


VI 


PREFATORY NOTE. 


Coming Race” is a work of pure fancy, and the satire of it is 
vague and sportive. The outlines of a definite purpose are 
more distinctly drawn in “ Chillingly” — a romance which has 
the source of its effect in a highly-wrought imagination. The 
humor and pathos of “ Chillingly” are of a kind incompatible 
with the design of “ The Parisians,” which is a work of 
dramatized observation. “ Chillingly” is a Romance ; “ The 
“ Parisians” is a Novel. The subject of “ Chillingly” is 
psychological ; that of “ The Parisians” is social. The au- 
thor’s object in “ Chillingly” being to illustrate the effect of 
“ modern” ideas upon an individual character, he has confined 
his narrative to the biography of that one character. Hence 
the simplicity of plot and small number of dramatis 'personse, ; 
whereby the work gains in height and depth what it loses in 
breadth of surface. “ The Parisians,” on the contrary, is 
designed to illustrate the effect of “modern ideas” upon a 
whole community. This novel is therefore panoramic in the 
profusion and variety of figures presented by it to the reader’s 
imagination. No exclusive prominence is vouchsafed to any 
of these figures. All of them are drawn and colored with an 
equal care, but by means of the bold broad touches necessary 
for their effective presentation on a canvas so large and so 
crowded. Such figures are, indeed, but the component 
features of one great Form, and their actions only so many 
modes of one collective impersonal character — that of the 
Parisian Society of Imperial and Democratic France ; — a 
character everywhere present and busy throughout the storyj 
of which it is the real hero or heroine. This society w;aS 
doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being the 


PREFATORY NOTE. 


vii 


most advanced in the progress of “ modern ideas.” Thus, for 
a complete perception of its writer’s fundamental purpose, 
“ The Parisians’^ should be read in connection with “ Chih 
lingly,” and these two books in connection with “ The 
Coming Race.” It will then be perceived that, through the 
medium of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation, assisted 
by humor and passion, these three books (in all other respects 
so different from each other) complete the presentation of the 
same purpose under different aspects, and thereby constitute 
a group of fictions which claims a separate place of its own in 
any thoughtful classification of their author’s works. 

One last word to those who will miss from these pages the 
connecting and completing touches of the master’s hand.* It 
may be hoped that such a disadvantage, though irreparable, is 
somewhat mitigated by the essential character of the work 
itself. The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel is in the 
vivacity of a general effect produced by large swift strokes of 
character ; and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, 
force and freedom of style must still be apparent, even when 
they are left rough and unfinished. Nor can any lack of final 
verbal correction much diminish the intellectual value which 
many of the more thoughtful passages of the present work 
derive from a long, keen, and practical study of political 
phenomena, guided by personal experience of public life, and 
enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human 
heart. 

Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private 


* See also Note by the Author’s Son, p. 174, vol. iii. 


Vlll 


PREFATORY NOTE. 


communications spontaneously made, to him who expresses 
it, by persons of political experience and social position in 
France ; who have acknowledged the general accuracy of the 
author’s descriptions, and noticed the suggestive sagacity and 
penetration of his occasional comments on the circumstances 
and sentiments he describes. 

, It only remains to discharge a debt of gratitude to Messre. 
Blackwood by thus publicly acknowledging the careful and 
scrupulous attention they have given to the printing of this 
book, and the efforts made by them, under exceptionally 
difficult conditions, to present to their readers in the best 
possible form, this, the last of that long list of well-known 
fictions, which throughout every region of Europe and 
America have now for so many years associated their name 
with that of its author. 


L. 


THE PARISIANS. 


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

They who chance to have read the “ Coming Race” may 
perhaps remember that I, the adventurous discoverer of the 
land without a sun, concluded the sketch of my adventures by 
a brief reference to the malady which, though giving no per- 
ceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion of 
my medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal. 

I had brought my little book to this somewhat melancholy 
close a few years before the date of its publication, and, in the 
mean while, I was induced to transfer my residence to Paris, 
in order to place myself under the care of an English physi- 
cian, renowned for his successful treatment of complaints 
analogous to my own. 

I was the more readily persuaded to undertake this journey, 
partly because I enjoyed a familiar acquaintance with the em- 
inent physician referred to, who had commenced his career 
and founded his reputation in the United States, partly 
because I had become a solitary man, the ties of home 
broken, and dear friends of mine were domiciled in Paris, 
with whom I should be sure of tender sympathy and cheer- 
ful companionship. I had reason to be thankful for this 

6 


6 


THE PARISIANS. 


change of residence : the skill of Dr. C soon restored mo 

to health. Brought much into contact with various circles 
of Parisian society, I became acquainted with the persons, 
and a witness of the events, that form the substance of the 
tale I am about to submit to the public, which has treated 
my former book with so generous an indulgence. Sensitively 
tenacious of that character for strict and unalloyed veracity 
which, I flatter myself, my account of the abodes and manners 
of the Vril-ya has established, I could have wished to pre- 
serve the following narrative no less jealously guarded than 
its predecessor from the vagaries of fancy. But truth undis- 
guised, never welcome in any civilized community above 
ground, is exposed at this time to especial dangers in Paris ; 
and my life would not be worth an hour’s purchase if I ex- 
hibited her in puris natwralihus to the eyes of a people wholly 
unfamiliarized to a spectacle so indecorous. That care for 
one’s personal safety, which is the first duty of thoughtful 
man, compels me therefore to reconcile the appearance of la 
viiiU to the hienseances of the polished society in which la 
Liberti admits no opinion not dressed after the last fashion. 

Attired as fiction. Truth may be peacefully received ; and, 
despite the necessity thus imposed by prudence, I indulge the 
modest hope that I do not in these pages unfaithfully repre- 
sent certain prominent types of the brilliant population which 
has invented so many varieties of Koom-Posh,* and, even 


^ Koom'-Posh, Glek-Naa. For the derivation of these terms and their 
metaphorical signification, I must refer the reader to the ‘^Coming 
Race,” chapter «ii., on the language of the Vril-ya. To those who have 
not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may be conve- 


THE PARISIANS. 


7 


when it appears hopelessly lost in the slough of a Glek-Nas, 
re-emerges fresh and lively as if from an invigorating plunge 
into the Fountain of Youth. 0 Parh^ foyer des idles, et oeil 
du mondel — animated contrast to the serene tranquillity of 
the Vril-ya, which, nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers 
ever pretend to make the goal of their desires — of all commu- 
nities on which shines the sun and descend the rains of 
heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, in 
every city men have yet built on this earth, mayest thou, 0 
Paris, be the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and 
be reduced into cinders for the sake of the common good ! 

• Tisn. 

Paris, August 28, 1872. 


nient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is the name for 
the government of the many, or the ascendency of the most ignorant or 
hollow, and may he loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh. When Koom-Posh 
degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular ferocity which pre- 
cedes its decease, the name for that state of things is Glek-Nas — viz., 
the universal strife-rot. 


-w 


K I HIM /.I 3 nr 


i; jifi ,(l .iur,f AiJsfjf.Mj-fMf >ruw’(jr|p Ji n.>il .• 

riiij^ay^^ut n-s iiiiva 'li ku vhiril ima tiR'Wt 

V^.vv.\ . M,^;\ O ./liiJoY 'iy. jiUiiii/./i 

’io Oi*i ul 4ai;ii{rou'6iit;au;<jii---*..-,\A»a>iu. \t\) 

■ jiffy/ ,/r^-IiiY 

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i' d/f) fuf.oy^ili, fjuis uifg ani atnii/Oj A-jhf // m\ >iyijfii 

. ii.i f<^rv ba« .tJin'ii / b^u jjaubAw ^iiL* ;ujii\i(D'fr{f.‘jaoviiyff 

, 0 oV'j'/fiifi 5 -Mj «<‘ iiliiil ioi-QVMii swityjh 'Qrro 

.jbi ^ i^fl/iyolj iji ! j k) hlijiijv/ cvjfl i)7md 6t Jad^odi fjil ^hu*l 
■ :^, ! f;Kr^ iiuaxmf^y yffj lo oiti -tdi uPm LoDuua:t od 

, V^r .t • ^ , . . • v-’i ,v . , - tuva«A 


toU ofiicu iilt ei nf-(h7oj!i dirfriffu^I-nioit/l vU rnd obt!e ol >fHi.f 
lo Ja*npnjii laotrcoiJ/ 'lu ywjdt.n-^9HK o.j, lo ^iivijiH-raTos ydJ 

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booik: I. 


CHAPTER L 

It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869^ 

All Paris seemed to have turned out to enjoy itself. The 
TuilerieSj the Champs Elysees, the Bois de Boulogne, swarmed 
with idlers. A stranger might have wondered where Toil 
was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed. A 
millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round 
on the magasins, the equipages, the dresses of the women ; as 
he inquired the prices in the shops and the rent of apart- 
ments, — might have asked himself, in envious wonder. How 
on earth do those gay Parisians live? What is their fortune? 
Where does it come from ? 

As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded 
into the Boulevards ; the cafes and restaurants began to 
light up. 

About this time a young man, who might be some five or 
six and twenty, was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, 
heeding little the throng through which he glided his solitary 
way. There was that in his aspect and bearing which caught 
attention. He looked a somebody ; but, though unmistakably 
a Frenchman, not a Parisian. His dress was not in the pre- 
vailing mode : to a practiced eye it betrayed the taste and 
the cut of a provincial tailor. His gait was not that of the 
A* 9 


10 


THE PARISIANS. 


Parisian — less lounging, more stately; and, unlike the Paris- 
ian, he seemed indiflferent to the gaze of others. 

Nevertheless there was about him that air of dignity or dis- 
tinction which those who are reared from their cradle in the 
pride of birth acquire so unconsciously that it seems heredi- 
tary and inborn. It must also be confessed that the young 
man himself was endowed with a considerable share of that 
nobility which Nature capriciously distributes among , her fa- 
vorites, with little respect for their pedigree and blazonr— the 
nobility of form and face. He was tall and well shaped, with 
graceful length of limb and fall of shoulders; his face was 
handsome, of the purest type of French masculine beauty — 
the nose inclined to be aquiline, and delicately thin, with 
finely-cut open nostrils ; the complexion clear, the eyes large, 
of a light hazel, with dark lashes, the hair of a chestnut 
brown, T;\ith no tint of auburn, the beard and moustache a 
shade daiker, clipped short, not disguising the outline of lips, 
which Were now compressed, as if smiles had of - late been un- 
familiar to them ; yet such compression did not seem in har- 
mony with the physiognomical character of their formation, 
which was that assigned by Lavater to temperaments easily 
moved to gayety and pleasure. 

Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of 
one of the streets of the Chauss4e d’Antin, brushed close by 
the stately pedestrian above described, caught sight of his 
c(mntenance, stopped short, and exclaimed, “Alain!” The 
person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye tranquilly on the 
eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped in black 
beard; and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the head 


THE PARISIANS. 


11 


that implied, “Sir, you are mistaken ; I have not the honor 
to know you,” continued hia slow indifFerent way. The 
would-be acquaintance was not so easily rebuffed. 
said he, between his teeth, “ I am Certainly right. He is not 
much altered — of course / am; ten years of Paris would im- 
prove an orang-outang.” Quickening, his step, and regaining 
the side of the man he had called “Alain,” he said, with a 
well-bred mixture of boldness and courtesy in his tone and 
countenance— 

“Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. But surely I 
accost Alain de Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Bochebriant.” 

“True, sir; but ” 

“ But you do not remember me, your old college friend, 
Frederic Lemercier?” 

“Is it possible?” cried Alain, cordially, and with an anima- 
tion which changed the whole character of his countenance. 
“My dear Frederic, my dear friend, this is indeed good for- 
tune! So you, too, are at Paris?” 

“Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive,” he added, 
somewhat satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found 
friend’s, he glanced at the cut of that friend’s coat-collar. 

“ I have been here a fortnight,” replied Alain. 

“Hem! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Roche- 
briant. I passed it yesterday, admiring its vast fagade^ little 
thinking you were its inmate.” 

“iN either am I; the hotel does not belong to me — it was 
sold some years ago by my father.” 

“Indeed! I hope your father got a good price for it; those 
grand hotels have trebled their value within the last five 


12 


THE PARISIANS. 


years. And how is your father? Still the same polished 
grand seigneur ? I never saw him but once, you know; and 
I shall never forget his smile, style grand monarque^ when he 
patted me on the head and tipped me ten napoleons.” 

“My father is no more,” said Alain, gravely; “he has been 
dead nearly three years.” 

“ Ciel! forgive me ; I am greatly shocked. Hem ! so you 
are now the Marquis de Rochebriant, a great historical name,' 
worth a large sum in the market. Few such names left. 
Superb place your old chateau, is it not?” 

“A superb place. No — a venerable ruin. Yes!” 

“Ah, a ruin! so much the better. All the bankers are 
mad after ruins — so charming an amusement to restore them. 
You will restore yours, without doubt. I will introduce you 
to such an architect ! has the moyen dge at his fingers’ ends. 
Dear — but a genius.” 

The young Marquis smiled — for since he had found a col- 
lege friend, his face showed that it could smile ; smiled, but 
not cheerfully, and answered — 

“ I have no intention to restore Rochebriant. The walls 
are solid ; they have weathered the storms of six centuries ; 
they will last my time, and with me the race perishes.” 

“ Bah ! the race perish, indeed ! you will marry. Parlez- 
moi de ga — you could not come to a better man. I have a 
list of all the heiresses at Paris, bound in russia leather. You 
may take your choice out of twenty. Ah, if I were biit a 
Rochebriant! It is an infernal thing to come into the world 
a Lemercier. I am a democrat, of course. A Lemercier 
would be in a false position if he were not. But if any one 


THE PARISIANS. 


13 


would leave me twenty acres of land, with some antique right 
to the. De and a title, faith, would not I be an aristocrat and 
stand up for my order? But now we have met, pray let us 
dine together. Ah ! no doubt you are engaged every day for 
a month. A Bochebriant just new to Paris must be fete by 
all the Faubourg.” 

“No,” answered Alain, simply — “I am not engaged; my 
range of acquaintance is more circumscribed than you sup- 
pose.” 

“ So much the better for me. I am luckily disengaged to- 
day, which is not often the case, for I am in some request in 
my own set, though it is not that of the Faubourg. Where 
shall we dine?— at the Trois Freres?” 

“ Wherever you please. I know no restaurant at Paris ex- 
cept a very ignoble one, close by my lodging.” 

“Apropos, where do you lodge?” 

“Bue de I’Universite, Numero * * *.” 

“A fine street, but triste. If you have no longer your 
family hotel, you have no excuse to linger in that museum of 
mummies, the Faubourg St. Germain; you must go into one 
of the new quarters by the Champs Elys4es. Leave it to me ; 
I’ll find you a charming apartment. I know one to be had a 
bargain — a bagatelle — five hundred naps a year. Cost you 
about two or three thousand more to furnish tolerably, not 
showily. Leave all to me. In three days you shall be set- 
tled. A proposl horses! You must have English ones. 
How many? — three for the saddle, two for your coupe? I’ll 
find them for you. I will write to London to-morrow. Reese 
fBice) is your man.” 


14 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Spare yourself tliat trouble, my dear Frederic. I keep no 
horses and no coupS. I shall not change my apartment.” As 
he said this, Rochebriant drew himself up somewhat haughtily. 

“Faith,” thought Lemercier, “is it possible that the Mar- 
quis is poor? No. I have always heard that the Rochebri- 
ants were among the greatest proprietors in Bretagne. Most 
likely, with all his innocence of the Faubourg St. Germain, 
he knows enough of it to be aware that I, Frederic Lemercier, 
am not the man to patronize one of its greatest nobles. 
Sacre hleu! if I thought that; if he meant to give himself 
airs to me, his old college friend — I would — I would call 
him out.” 

Just as M. Lemercier had come to that bellicose resolution, 
the Marquis said, with a smile which, though frank, was not 
without a certain grave melancholy in its expression, “My 
dear Frederic, pardon me if I seem to receive your friendly 
offers ungraciously. But believe that I have reasons you will 
approve for leading at Paris a life which you certainly will 
not envy;” then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he 
said, in a livelier tone, “But what a marvelous city this 
Paris of ours is ! Remember, I had never seen it before ; it 
burst on me like a city in the Arabian Nights two weeks ago. 
And that which strikes me most — I say it with regret and a 
pang of conscience — is certainly not the Paris of former 
times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte — I beg pardon, 
which the Emperor — ^has called up around him and identi- 
fied forever with his reign. It is what is new in Paris that 
strikes and enthralls me. Here I see the life of France, and 
I belong to her tombs !” 


THE PARISIANS. 


15 


“I don’t quite understand you,’>’ said Lemercier. “If you 
think that because your father and grandfather were Legiti- 
mists, you have not the fair field of living ambition open to 
you under the Empire, you never were more mistaken. Mayen 
dge^ and even rococo^ are all the rage. You have no idea 
how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial 
Court or in a Commercial Company. But with your for- 
tune you are independent of all but fashion and the Jockey 
Club. And d propos of that, pardon me — what villain 
made your coat? — let me know; I will denounce him to the 
police.” 

Half amused, half amazed, Alain Marquis de Rochebriant 
looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a good-tempered lion 
may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with his 
mane, and, after a pause, he replied, curtly, “The clothes I 
wear at Paris were made in Bretagne ; and if the name of 
Rochebriant be of any value a* all in Paris, which I doubt, let 
me trust that it will make me acknowledged as geritilhomme^ 
whatever my taste in a coat, or whatever the doctrines of a 
club composed — of jockeys.” 

“ Ha, ha I” cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm 
of his friend, and laughing the more irresistibly as he encoun- 
tered the grave look of the Marquis. “Pardon me — I can’t 
help it — the Jockey Club — composed of jockeys! — it is too 
much! — the best joke! My dear Alain, there is some of the 
best blood of Europe in the Jockey Club ; they would exclude 
a plain hourgeois like me. But it is all the same ; in one re- 
spect you are quite right. Walk in a blouse if you please — 
you are still Rochebriant — you would only be called eccentric. 


16 


THE PARISIANS. 


Alas! I am obliged to send to London for my pantaloons; 
that comes of being a Lemercier. But here we are in the 
Palais Koyal.” 


CHAPTER II. 

The salons of the Trois Fr^res were crowded — our friends 
found a table with some little difficulty. Lemercier proposed 
a private cabinet, which, for some reason known to himself, 
the Marquis declined. 

Lemercier spontaneously and unrequested ordered the 
dinner and the wines. 

While waiting for their oysters, with which, when in 
season, French hon-vivants usually commence their dinner, 
Lemercier looked round the salon with that air of inimitable, 
scrutinizing, superb impertinence which distinguishes the 
Parisian dandy. Some of the ladies returned his glance co- 
quettishly, for Lemercier was heau gargon; others turned 
aside indignantly and muttered something to the gentlemen 
dining with them. The said gentlemen, when old, shook 
their heads, and continued to eat unmoved; when young, 
turned briskly round, and looked at first fiercely at M. Le- 
mercier, but, encountering his eye through the glass which he 
had screwed into its socket — noticing the hardihood of his 
countenance and the squareness of his shoulders — even they 
turned back to the tables, shook their heads, and continued 
to eat unmoved, just like the old ones. 


THE PARISIANS. 


17 


“Ah I” cried Lemercier, suddenly, “here comes a man you 
should know, mon cher. He will tell you how to place your 
money— a rising man — a coming man — a future minister. 
Ah! hon-jouTy Duplessis, hon-jour^' kissing his hand to a gen- 
tleman who had just entered, and was looking about him for 
a seat. He was evidently well and favorably known at the 
Trois Freres. The waiters had flocked round him, and were 
pointing to a table by the window, which a saturnine English- 
man, who had dined off a beef-steak and potatoes, was about 
to vacate. 

Mons. Duplessis, having flrst assured himself, like a prudent 
man, that his table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his 
chablis, and his jpotage d la hisque^ now paced calmly and 
slowly across the sahn, and halted before Lemercier. 

Here let me pause for a moment, and give the reader a 
rapid sketch of the two Parisians. 

Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too showily, in 
the extreme of the prevalent fashion. He wears a superb pin 
in his cravat — a pin worth two thousand francs; he wears 
rings on his fingers, hreloques to his watch-chain. He has a 
warm though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows, full 
lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine 
large dark eyes, a bold, open, somewhat impertinent expres- 
sion of countenance — withal decidedly handsome, thanks to 
coloring, youth, and vivacity of “reyard.” 

Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glancing first 
with curiosity at the Marquis de Rochebriant, who leans his 
cheek on his hand and seems not to notice him, then concen 
trating his attention on Frederic Lemercier, who . sits square 

2 


18 


THE PARISIANS. 


with his hands clasped — Lucien Duplessis is somewhcjre 
between forty and fifty, rather below the middle height, 
slender but not slight — what in English phrase is called 
“ wiry.” He is dressed with extreme simplicity : black frock- 
coat buttoned up ; black cravat worn higher than men who 
follow the fashions wear their neckcloths nowadays ; a hawk’s 
eye and a hawk’s beak ; hair of a dull brown, very short, and 
wholly without curl ; his cheeks thin and smoothly shaven, 
but he wears a moustache and imperial, plagiarized from those 
of his sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying the bor- 
rowed beauty to extremes, so that the points of moustache 
and imperial, stiffened and sharpened by cosmetics which 
must have been composed of iron, looked like three long 
stings guarding lip and jaw from invasion ; a pale olive-brown 
complexion j eyes small, deep-sunk, calm, piercing; his ex- 
pression of face at first glance not striking, except for quiet 
immovability. Observed more heedfully, the expression was 
keenly intellectual — determined about the lips, calculating 
about the brows : altogether the face of no ordinary man, 
and one not, perhaps, without fine and high qualities, con- 
cealed from the general gaze by habitual reserve, but justi- 
fying the confidence of those whom he admitted into hia 
intimacy. 

“Ah, mon cher,^' said Lemercier, “you promised to call 
oh me yesterday at two o’clock. I waited in for you half an 
hour ; you never came.” 

“No; I went first to the Bourse. The shares in that 
Company we spoke of have fallen ; they will fall much lower 
- — ^foolish to buy in yet ; so the object of my calling on you 


THE PARISIANS. 


19 


was over. I took it for granted you would not wait if I failed 
my appointment. Do you go to the opera to-night ?’’ 

“ I think not — nothing worth going for ; besides, I have found 
an old friend, to whom I consecrate this evening. Let me intro- 
duce you to the Marquis de Rochebriant. Alain, M. Duplessis.” 

The two gentlemen bowed. 

“ I had the honor to be known to Monsieur your father,” 
said Duplessis. 

“Indeed,” returned Rochebriant. “He had not visited 
Paris for many years before he died.” 

“ It was in London I met him, at the house of the Russian 
Princess C- .” 

The marquis colored high, inclined his head gravely, and 
made no reply. Here the waiter brought the oysters and 
the chablis, and Duplessis retired to his own table. 

“ That is the most extraordinary man,” said Frederic, as he 
squeezed the lemon over his oysters, “ and very much to be 
admired.” 

“ How so ? I see nothing at least to admire in his face,” 
said the Marquis, with the bluntness of a provincial. 

“ His face. Ah ! you are a Legitimist — party prejudice. 
He dresses his face after the Emperor ; in itself a very clever 
face, surely.” 

“ Perhaps, but not an amiable one. He looks like a bird 
of prey.” 

“ All clever men are birds of prey. The eagles are the 
heroes, and the owls the sages. Duplessis is not an eagle noi 
an owl. I should rather call him a falcon, except that I would 
not attempt to hoodwink him.” 


20 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Call him what you will,” said the Marquis, indifferently ; 
“ M. Duplessis can be nothing to me.” 

“I’m not so sure of that,” answered Frederic, somewhat 
nettled by the phlegm with which the provincial regarded the 
pretensions of the Parisian. “Duplessis, I repeat it, is an 
extraordinary man. Though untitled, he descends from your 
old aristocracy ; in fact, I believe, as his name shows, from the 
same stem as the Richelieus. His father was a great scholar, 
and I believe he has read much himself. Might have taken 
to literature or the bar, but his parents died fearfully poor ; 
and some distant relations in commerce took charge of him, 
and devoted his talents to the Bourse. Seven y^ars ago he 
lived in a single chamber, au quatrihme^ near the Luxem- 
bourg. He has now a hotel, not large, but charming, in the 
Champs Elys4es, worth at least 600,000 francs. Nor has he 
made his own fortune alone, but that of many others ; some 
of birth as high as your own. He has the genius of riches, 
and knocks off a million as a poet does an ode, by the force of 
inspiration. He is hand-in-glove with the Ministers, and has 
been invited to Compiegne by the Emperor. You will find 
him very useful.” 

Alain made a slight movement of incredulous dissent, and 
changed the conversation to reminiscences of old schoolboy 
days. 

The dinner at length came to a close. Frederic fang for 
the bill — glanced over it. “Fifty-nine francs,” said he, care- 
lessly flinging down his napoleon and a half. The Marquis 
silently drew forth his purse and extracted the same sum. 

When they were out of the restaurant, Frederic proposed 


THE PARISIANS. 


21 


adjourning to his own rooms. ‘‘ I can promise you an excel* 
lent cigar, one of a box given to me by an invaluable young 
Spaniard attached to the Embassy here. Such cigars are not 
to be had at Paris for money, nor even for love, seeing that 
women, however devoted and generous, never offer you any- 
thing better than a cigarette. Such cigars are only to be had 
for friendship. Friendship is a jewel.” 

“I never smoke,” answered the Marquis, “but I shall bo 
charmed to come to your rooms ; only don’t let me encroach 
on your good nature. Doubtless you have engagements for 
the evening.” 

“ None till eleven o’clock, when I have promised to go to a 
soiree, to which I do not offer to take you ; for it is one of 
those Bohemian entertainments at which it would do you 
harm in the Faubourg to assist — at least until you have made 
good your position. Let me see, is not the Duchesse de 
Tarascon a relation of yours?” 

“Yes; my poor mother’s first-cousin.” 

“ I congratulate you. Tres-grande dame. She w”!!! launch 
you in puro coelo, as Juno might have launched one of her 
young peacocks.” 

“ There has been no acquaintance between our houses,” re 
turned the Marquis, dryly, “since the mesalliance of her 
second nuptials.” 

^^Mesalliance! second nuptials! Her second husband was 
the Duke de Tarascon.” 

“A duke of the First Empire — the grandson of a butcher.” 

“ Liable I you are a severe genealogist. Monsieur le Marquis. 
How can you consent to walk arm-in-arm with me, whoso 



22 


THE PARISIANS. 


great-grandfather supplied bread to the same army to which 
the Duke de Tarascon’s grandfather furnished the meat?” 

“ IMy dear Frederic, we two have an equal pedigree, for our 
friendship dates from the same hour. I do not blame the 
Duchesse de Tarascon for marrying the grandson of a butcher, 
\ ut for marrying the son of a man made duke by an usurper. 
She abandoned the faith of her house and the cause of her 
sovereign. Therefore her marriage is a blot on our scutcheon.” 

Frederic raised his eyebrows, but had the tact to pursue the 
subject no further. He who interferes in the quarrels of 
relations must pass through life without a friend. 

The young men now arrived at Lemercier's apartment, an 
entresol looking on the Boulevard des Italiens, consisting of 
more rooms than a bachelor generally requires ; and, though 
low-pitched, of good dimensions, decorated and furnished with 
a luxury which really astonished the provincial, though, with 
the high-bred pride of an Oriental, he suppressed every sign 
of surprise. 

Florentine cabinets freshly retouched by the exquisite skill 
of Mombro ; costly specimens of old Sevres and Limoges ; 
pictures and bronzes and marble statuettes — all well chosen 
and of great price, reflected from mirrors in Venetian frames 
— ^made a coup-d'oeil very favorable to that respect which the 
human mind pays to the evidences of money. Nor was com- 
fort less studied than splendor. Thick carpets covered the 
floors, doubled and quilted poriiVes excluded all draughts from 
chinks in the doors. Having allowed his friend a few minutes 
to contemplate and admire the salle d manger and salon which 
constituted his more state apartments, Frederic then con- 


THE PARISIANS. 


23 


ducted him into a small cabinet, fitted up with scarlet cloth 
and gold fringes, whereon were artistically arranged trophies 
of Eastern weapons and Turkish pipes with amber mouths 
pieces. 

There placing the Marquis at ease on a divan, and fiinging 
himself on another, the Parisian exquisite ordered a valet, 
well dressed as himself, to bring cofiee and liqueurs ; and after 
vainly pressing one of his matchless cigars on his friend, in- 
dulged in his own Regalia. 

“ They are ten years old,” said Frederic, with a tone of 
compassion at Alain’s self-inflicted loss — “ ten years old. 
Born, therefore, about the year in which we two parted.” 

“ When you were so hastily summoned from college,” said 
the Marquis, “ by the news of your father’s illness. We 
expected you back in vain. Have you been at Paris ever 
since ?” 

“ Ever since ; my poor father died of that illness. His 
fortune proved much larger than was suspected; my share 
amounted to an income, from investments in stocks, houses, 
etc., to upwards of 60,000 francs a year ; and as I wanted six 
years of my majority, of course the capital on attaining my 
majority would be increased by accumulation. My mother 
desired to keep me near her; my uncle, who was joint guar- 
dian with her, looked with disdain on our poor little provin- 
cial cottage; so promising an heir should acquire his finish- 
ing education under masters at Paris. Long before I was of 
age, I was initiated into politer mysteries of our capital than 
those celebrated by Eiigene Sue. When I took possession of 
my fortune, five years ago, I was considered a Croesus ; and 


24 


THE PARISIANS. 


really for that patriarchal time I was wealthy. Now, alas i 
my accumulations have vanished in my outfit ; and 60,000 
francs a year is the least a Parisian can live upon. It is not 
only that all prices have fabulously increased, but that the 
dearer things become, the better people live. When I first 
came out the world speculated upon me ; now, in order to keep 
my standing, I am forced to speculate on the world. Hitherto 
I have not lost ; Duplessis let me into a few good things this 
year, worth 100,000 francs or so. Croesus consulted the 
Delphic Oracle. Duplessis was not alive in the time of Croe- 
sus, or Croesus would have consulted Duplessis.” 

Here there was a ring at the outer door of the apartment, 
and in another minute the valet ushered in a gentleman some- 
where about the age of thirty, of prepossessing countenance, 
and with the indefinable air of good-breeding and usage du 
monde. Frederic started up to greet cordially the new-comer, 
and introduced him to the Marquis under the name of “ Sare 
Grarm-Yarn.” 

“ Decidedly,” said the visitor, as he took off his paletot and 
seated himself beside the Marquis — “ decidedly, my dear 
Lemercier,” said he, in very correct French, and with the true 
Parisian accent and intonation, “ you Frenchmen merit that 
praise for polished ignorance of the language of barbarians 
which a distinguished historian bestows on the ancient Romans. 
Permit me, Marquis, to submit to you the consideration whether 
Grarm Yarn is a fair rendering of my name as truthfully 
printed on this card.” 

The inscription oi^ the card, thus drawn from its case and 
placed in Alain’s hand, was — 


THE PARISIANS. 


25 


Mr. Graham Vane, 

No. — Eue d’ Anjou. 

The Marquis gazed at it as he might on a hieroglyphic, and 
passed it on to Lemercier in discreet silence. 

That gentleman made another attempt at the barbarian 
appellation. 

‘ Grar — ham Yarne. C’est 9a ! I triumph ! all difficul- 
ties yield to French energy.” 

Here the coffee and liqueurs were served ; and after a 
short pause the Englishman, who had very quietly been 
observing the silent Marquis, turned to him and said, “ilfoTi- 
siewr le Marquis^ I presume it was your father whom I 
remember as an acquaintance of my own father at Ems. It 
is many years ago ; I was but a child. The Count de Cham- 
bord was then at that enervating little spa for the benefit of 
the Countess’s health. If our friend Lemercier does not 
mangle your name as he does mine, I understand him to say 
that you are the Marquis de Rochebriant.” 

“ That is my name : it pleases me to hear that my father 
was among those who flocked to Ems to do homage to the 
royal personage who deigns to assume the title of Count de 
Chambord.” 

“ My own ancestors clung to the descendants of James II. 
till their claims were buried in the grave of the last Stuart; 
and I honor the gallant men who, like your father, revere in 
an exile the heir to their ancient kings.” 

The Englishman said this with grace and feeling; the 
Marquis’s heart warmed to him at once. 

VOL. I. — B 


26 


THE PARISIANS. 


The first loyal gentilhomme I have met at Paris,” thought 
the Legitimist ; “ and, oh, shame ! not a Frenchman !” 

G-raham Vane, now stretching himself and accepting the 
cigar which Lemercier ofiered him, said to that gentleman, 
“ You who know your Paris by heart — everybody and every- 
thing therein worth the knowing, with many bodies and many 
things that are not worth it — can you inform me who and 
what is a certain lady who every fine day may be seen walk- 
ing in a quiet spot at the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, 
not far from the Baron de Rothschild’s villa ? The said lady 
arrives at this selected spot in a dark-blue coup4 without 
armorial bearings, punctually at the hour of three. She wears 
always the same dress, a kind of gray pearl-colored silk, with 
a cachemire shawl. In age she may be somewhat about twenty 
— a year or so more or less — and has a face as haunting as a 
Medusa’s ; not, however, a face to turn a man into a stone, 
but rather of the two turn a stone into a man. A clear pale- 
ness, with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light flash- 
ing through. I borrow that illustration from Sare Scott, who 
applied it to Milor Bee-ron.” 

“ I have not seen the lady you describe,” answered Lemer- 
cier, feeling humiliated by the avowal ; “in fact, I have not 
been in that sequestered part of the Bois for months ; but I 
will go to-morrow : three o’clock, you say Leave it to me ; to- 
morrow evening, if she is a Parisienne, you shall know all 
about her. But, mon cher^ you are not of a jealous tempera- 
ment, to confide your discovery to another.” 

“Yes, I am of a very jealous temperament,” replied the 
Englishman ; “ but jealousy comes after love, and not before 


THE PARISIANS. 


27 


it. I am not in love ; I am only haunted. To-morrow even- 
ing, then, shall we dine at Philippe’s, seven o’clock ?” 

“ With all my heart,” said Lemercier ; “ and you too, 
Alain.” 

“ Thank you, no,” said the Marquis, briefly ; and he rose, 
drew on his gloves, and took up his hat. 

At these signals of departure, the Englishman, who did not 
want tact or delicacy, thought that he had made himself de 
trop in the tUe-d-tete of two friends of the same age and 
nation ; and, catching up his paletot, said, hastily, “ No, Mar- 
quis, do not go yet, and leave our host in solitude ; for I have 
an engagement which presses, and only looked in at Lemer- 
cier’s for a moment, seeing the light at his windows. Permit 
me to hope that our acquaintance will not drop, and inform 
me where I may have the honor to call on you.” 

“Nay,” said the Marquis ; “I claim the right of a native 
to pay my respects first to the foreigner who visits our capital, 
and,” he added in a lower tone, “ who speaks so nobly of those 
who revere its exiles.” 

The Englishman saluted, and walked slowly towards the 
door, but on reaching the threshold turned back and made a 
sign to Lemercier, unperceived by Alain. 

Frederic understood the sign, and followed Glraham Vane 
into the adjoining room, closing the door as he passed. 

“ My dear Lemercier, of course I should not have intruded 
on you at this hour on a mere visit of ceremony. I called to 
say that the Mademoiselle Duval whose address you sent me 
is not the right one — not the lady whom, knowing your wide 
range of acquaintance, I asked you to aid me in finding out.” 


28 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Not the right Duval ? ’ Diable ! She answered your 
description exactly.” 

“ Not at all.” 

“ You said she was very pretty and young — under 
twenty.” 

“You forgot that I said she deserved that description 
twenty-one years ago.” 

“ Ah, so you did ; but some ladies are always young. 
‘ Age,’ says a wit in the Figaro^ ‘ is a river which the women 
compel to reascend to its source when it has flowed onward 
more than twenty years.’ Never mind — soyez tranquille — I 
will find your Duval yet, if she is to he found. But why 
could not the friend who commissioned you to inquire choose 
a name less common ? Duval ! every street in Paris has a 
shop-door over which is inscribed the name of Duval.” 

“ Quite true ; there is the difficulty ; however, my dear Le- 
mercier, pray continue to look out for a Louise Duval who 
was young and pretty twenty-one years ago — this search 
ought to interest me more than that which I intrusted to you 
to-night respecting the pearly-robed lady : for in the last I but 
gratify my own whim ; in the first I discharge a promise to a 
friend. You, so perfect a Frenchman, know the difl'erence; 
honor is engaged to the first. Be sure you let me know if 
you find any other Madame or Mademoiselle Duval ; and of 
course you remember your promise not to mention to any 
one the commission of inquiry you so kindly undertake. I 
congratulate you on your friendship for M. de Bochebriant. 
What a noble countenance and manner !” 

Lemercier returned to the Marquis. “ Such a pity you 


THE PARISIANS. 


29 


can’t dine with us to-morrow. I fear you made but a poor 
dinner to-day. But it is always better to arrange the men-u 
beforehand. I will send to Philippe’s to-morrow. Do not be 
afraid.” 

The Marquis paused a moment, and on his young face a 
proud struggle was visible. At last he said, bluntly and 
manfully — 

“ My dear Frederic, your world and mine are not and can- 
not be the same. Why should I be ashamed to own to my 
old schoolfellow that I am poor — very poor ; that the dinner 
I have shared with you to-day is to me a criminal extrava- 
gance ? I lodge in a single chamber on the fourth story ; I 
dine off a single plat at a small restaurateur^ s ; the utmost 
income I can allow to myself does not exceed 5000 francs 
a year ; my fortunes I cannot hope much to improve. In his 
own country Alain de Bochebriant has no career.” 

Lemercier was so astonished by this confession that he re- 
mained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth both wide 
open ; at length he sprang up, embraced his friend, wellnigh 
sobbing, and exclaimed, “ Tant mieux pour moil You must 
take your lodging with me. I have a charming bedroom to 
spare. Don’t say no. It will raise my own position to say I 
and Bochebriant keep house together. It must be so. Come 
here to-morrow. As for not having a career — bah ! I and 
Duplessis will settle that. You shall be a millionaire in two 
years. Meanwhile we will join capitals : I my paltry notes, 
you your grand name. Settled 1” 

“ My dear, dear Frederic,” said the young noble, deeply 
affected, “ on reflection you will see what you propose is im- 


30 


THE PARISIANS. 


possible. Poor I may be without dishonor ; live at another 
man’s cost I cannot do without baseness. It does not require to 
be gentilhomme to feel that : it is enough to be a Frenchman. 
Come and see me when you can spare the time. There is my 
address. You are the only man in Paris to whom I shall be 
at home. Au revoir^ And, breaking away from Lemer- 
cier’s clasp, the Marquis hurried off. 


CHAPTER III. 

Alain reached the house in which he lodged. Externally 
a fine house, it had been the hotel of a great family in the 
old regime. On the first floor were still superb apartments, 
with ceilings painted by Le Brun, with walls on which the 
thick silks still seemed fresh. These rooms were occupied by 
a rich agent de change ; but, like all such ancient palaces, the 
upper stories were wretchedly defective even in the comforts 
which poor men demand nowadays : a back staircase, narrow, 
dirty, never lighted, dark as Erebus, led to the room occupied 
by the Marquis, which might be naturally occupied by a 
needy student or a virtuous grisette. But there was to him 
a charm in that old hotel, and the richest hcataire therein 
was not treated with a respect so ceremonious as that which 
attended the lodger on the fourth story. The porter and his 
wife were Bretons ; they came from the village of Roche- 
briant ; they had known Alain’s parents in their young days ; 
it was their kinsman who had recommended him to the hotel 


THE 1» A R [ S I A N S. 


31 


which they served : so, when he paused at the lodge for his 
key, which he had left there, the porter’s wife was in waiting 
for his return, and insisted on lighting him up-stairs and see- 
ing to his fire, for after a warm day the night had turned to 
that sharp biting cold which is more trying in Paris than even 
in London. 

The old woman, running up the stairs before him, opened 
the door of his room, and busied herself at the fire. “ Gently, 
my good Martha,” said he; “that log suffices. I have been 
extravagant to-day, and must pinch for it.” 

M. le Marquis jests,” said the old woman, laughing. 

“No, Martha; I am serious. I have sinned, but I shall 
reform, ^tre nous, my dear friend, Paris is very dear 
when one sets one’s foot out of doors ; I must soon go back to 
E-ochebriant.” * 

“ When M. le Marquis goes back to Eochebriant he must 
take with him a Madame la Marquise — some pretty angel 
^ with a suitable dotJ’' 

“A dot suitable to the ruins of Eochebriant would not suf- 
fice to repair them, Martha : give me my dressing-gown, and 
good-night.” 

^^Bon repos^ M. le Marquis! heawx reves, et hel avenir." 

'■'■Bel avenirT murmured the young man, bitterly, leaning 
his cheek on his hand ; “ what fortune fairer than the present 
can be mine? yet inaction in youth is more keenly felt than 
in age. How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought 
poverty’s ennobling companion, labor — denied to me I Well, 
well, I must go back to the old rock : on this ocean there is 
no sail, not even an oar, for me.” 


32 


THE PARISIANS. 


Alain de Rochebriant had not been reared to the expecta- 
tion of poverty. The only son of a father whose estates were 
large beyond those of most nobles in modern France, his des- 
tined heritage seemed not unsuitable to his illustrious birth. 
Educated at a provincial academy, he had been removed at 
the age of sixteen to Rochebriant, and lived there simply and 
lonelily enough, but still in a sort of feudal state, with an 
aunt, an elder and unmarried sister to his father. 

His father he never saw but twice after leaving college. 
That brilliant seigneur visited France but rarely, for very 
brief intervals, residing wholly abroad. To him went all the 
revenues of Rochebriant save what sujficed for the menage of 
his son and his sister. It was the cherished belief of these 
two loyal natures that the Marquis secretly devoted his for- 
tuile to the cause of the Bourbons — how, they knew not, 
though they often amused themselves by conjecturing; and 
the young man, as he grew up, nursed the hope that he should 
soon hear that the descendant of Henri Quatre had crossed 
the frontier on a white charger and hoisted the old gonfalon 
with its Jieur de Us. Then, indeed, his own career would 
be opened, and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its 
sheath. Day after day he expected to hear of revolts, of 
which his noble father was doubtless the soul. But the Mar- 
quis, though a sincere Legitimist, was by no means an enthu- 
siastic fanatic. He was simply a very proud, a very polished, 
a very luxurious, and, though not without the kindliness and 
generosity which were common attributes of the old French 
noblesse^ a very selfish grand seigneur. 

Losing his wife (who died the first year of marriage in 


THE TAllISIANS. 


33 


giving birth to Alain) while he was yet very young, he had 
lived a frank libertine life until he fell submissive under the 
despotic yoke of a Russian Princess, who, for some mysterious 
reason, never visited her own country and obstinately refused 
to reside in France. She was fond of travel, and moved 
yearly from London to Naples, Naples to Vienna, Berlin, 
Madrid, Seville, Carlsbad, Baden-Baden — anywhere for caprice 
or change, except Paris. This fair wanderer succeeded in 
chaining to herself the heart and the steps of the Marquis de 
Rochebriant. 

She was very rich; she lived semi-royally. Hers was just 
the house in which it suited the Marquis to be the enfant 
gate. I suspect that, cat-like, his attachment was rather to 
the house than to the person of his mistress. Not that he 
was domiciled with the Princess ; that would have been some- 
what too much against the proprieties, greatly too much 
against the Marquis’s notions of his own dignity. He had 
his own carriage, his own apartments, his own suitCy as 
became so grand a seigneur and the lover of so grand a dame. 
His estates, mortgaged before he came to them, yielded no 
income sufficient for his wants; he mortgaged deeper and 
deeper, year after year, till he could mortgage them no more. 
He sold his hotel at Paris — he accepted without scruple his 
sister’s fortune — he borrowed with equal sang froid the two 
hundred thousand francs which his son on coming of age 
inherited from his mother. Alain yielded that fortune to him 
without a murmur — nay, with pride ; he thought it destined 
to go towards raising a regiment for the fleur de lis. 

To do the Marquis justice, he was fully persuaded that he 
B* 3 


34 


THE PARISIANS. 


should shortly restore to his sister and son what he so reck- 
lessly took from them. He was engaged to be married to his 
Princess so soon as her own husband died. She had been 
separated from the Prince for many years, and every year it 
was said he could not last a year longer. But he completed 
the measure of his conjugal iniquities by continuing to live ; 
and one day, by mistake. Death robbed the lady of the Mar- 
quis instead of the Prince. 

This was an accident which the Marquis had never counted 
upon. He was still young enough to consider himself young ; 
in fact, one principal reason for keeping Alain secluded in 
Brittany was his reluctance to introduce into the world a son 
“ as old as myself,” he would say pathetically. The news of 
his death, which, happened at Baden after a short attack of 
bronchitis caught in a supper al fresco at the old castle, was 
duly transmitted to Bochebriant by the Princess; and the 
shock to Alain and his aunt was the greater because they had 
seen so little of the departed that they regarded him as a he- 
roic myth, an impersonation of ancient chivalry, condemning 
himself to voluntary exile rather than do homage to usurpers. 
But from their grief they were soon roused by the terri- 
ble doubt whether Bochebriant could still be retained in 
the family. Besides the mortgagees, creditors from half the 
capitals in Europe sent in their claims ; and all the movable 
effects transmitted to Alain by his father’s confidential Italian 
valet, except sundry carriages and horses which were sold at 
Baden for what they would fetch, were a magnificent dressing- 
case, in the secret drawer of which were some bank-notes 
amounting to thirty thousand francs, and three large boxes 


THE PARISIANS. 


35 


containing the Marquis’s correspondence, a few miniature 
female portraits, and a great many locks of hair. 

Wholly unprepared for the ruin that stared him in the face, 
the young Marquis evinced the natural strength of his charac- 
ter by the calmness with which he met the danger, and the 
intelligence with which he calculated and reduced it. 

By the help of the family notary in the neighboring town, 
he made himself master of his liabilities and his means ; and 
he found that, after paying all debts and providing for the 
interest of the mortgages, a property which ought to have 
realized a rental of £10,000 a year yielded not more than 
£400. Nor was even this margin safe, nor the property out 
of peril ; for the principal mortgagee, who was a capitalist in 
Paris named Louvier, having had during the life of the late 
Marquis more than once to wait for his half-yearly interest 
longer than suited his patience — and his patience was not en- 
during — plainly declared that if the same delay recurred he 
should put his right of seizure in force ; and in France still 
more than in England bad seasons seriously affect the security 
of rents. To pay away £9600 a year regularly out of £10,000, 
with the penalty of forfeiting the whole if not paid, whether 
crops may fail, farmers procrastinate, and timber fall in price, 
is to live with the sword of Damocles over one’s head. 

For two years and more, however, Alain met his difficulties 
with prudence and vigor; he retrenched the establishment 
hitherto kept at the chateau, resigned such rural pleasures 
as he had been accustomed to indulge, and lived like one of 
his petty farmers. But the risks of the future remained un- 
diminished. 


36 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ There is but one way, Monsieur le Marquis,” said the 
family notary, M. Hebert, “ by which you can put your estate 
in comparative safety. Your father raised his mortgages from 
time to time, as he wanted money, and often at interest above 
the average market interest. You may add considerably to 
your income by consolidating all these mortgages into one at 
a lower percentage, and in so doing pay off this formidable 
mortgagee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon 
becoming the proprietor of Rochebriant. Unfortunately, those 
fesv portions of your land which were but lightly charged, and, 
lying contiguous to small proprietors, were coveted by them, 
and could be advantageously sold, are already gone to pay the 
debts of Monsieur the late Marquis. There are, however, two 

small farms, which, bordering close on the town of S , I 

think I could dispose of for building purposes at high rates ; 
but these lands are covered by Monsieur Louvier s general 
mortgage, and he has refused to release them unless the whole 
debt be paid. Were that debt, therefore, transferred to another 
mortgage, we might stipulate for their exception, and in so doing 
secure a sum of more than 100,000 francs, which you could 
keep in reserve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion, and make 
the nucleus of a capital devoted to the gradual liquidation of 
the charges on the estate. For with a little capital. Monsieur 
le Marquis your rent-roll might be very greatly increased, the 

forests and orchards improved, those^ meadows round S 

drained and irrigated. Agriculture is beginning to be under- 
stood in Bretagne, and your estate would soon double its value 
in the hands of a spirited capitalist. My advice to you, 
therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good avoue^ practiced in 


THE PARISIANS. 


37 


such branch of his profession, to negotiate the consolidation 
of your mortgages upon terms that will enable you to sell 
outlying portions, and so pay off the charge by installments 
agreed upon ; — to see if some safe company or rich individual 
can be found to undertake for a term of years the manage- 
ment of your forests, the draining of the S meadows, the 

superintendence of your fisheries, etc. They, it is true, will 
monopolize the profits for many years — perhaps twenty ; but 
you are a young man ; at the end of that time you will re- 
enter on your estate with a rental so improved that the mort- 
gages, now so awful, will seem to you comparatively trivial.” 

In pursuance of this advice, the young Marquis had come 
to Paris fortified with a letter from M. Hebert to an avoue 
of eminence, and with many letters from his aunt to the 
nobles of the Faubourg connected with his house. Now, one 
reason why M. Hebert had urged his client to undertake this 
important business in person, rather than volunteer his own 
services in Paris, was somewhat extra-professional. He had 
a sincere and profound affection for Alain ; he felt compassion 
for that young life so barrenly wasted in seclusion and severe 
privations ; he respected, but was too practical a man of busi- 
ness to share, those chivalrous sentiments of loyalty to an 
exiled dynasty which disqualified the man for the age he lived 
in, and, if not greatly modified, would cut him off from the 
hopes and aspirations of his eager generation. He thought 
plausibly enough that the air of the grand metropolis was 
necessary to the mental health, enfeebled and withering amidst 
the feudal mists of Bretagne; that once in Paris, x\lain 
would imbibe the ideas of Paris, adapt himself to some career 


88 


THE PARISIANS. 


leading to honor and to fortune, for which he took facilities 
from his high birth, an historical name too national for any 
dynasty not to welcome among its adherents, and an intellect 
not yet sharpened by contact and competition with others, but 
in itself vigorous, habituated to thought, and vivified by the 
noble aspirations which belong to imaginative natures. 

At the least, Alain would be at Paris in the social position 
■which would afford him the opportunities of a marriage in 
which his birth and rank would be readily accepted as an 
equivalent to some ample fortune that would serve to redeem 
the endangered seigneuries. He therefore warned Alain that 
the affair for which he went to Paris might be tedious, that 
lawyers were always slow, and advised him to calculate on re- 
maining several months, perhaps a year ; delicately suggest- 
ing that his rearing hitherto had been too secluded for his age 
and rank, and that a year at Paris, even if he failed in the 
object which took him there, would not be thrown away in 
the knowledge of men and things that would fit him better 
to grapple with his difficulties on his return. 

Alain divided his spare income between his aunt and him- 
self, and had come to Paris resolutely determined to live 
within the £200 a year which remained to his share. He 
felt the revolution in his whole being which commenced when 
out of sight of the petty principality in which he was the 
object of that feudal reverence, still surviving in the more 
unfrequented parts of Bretagne, for the representatives of 
illustrious names connected with the immemorial legends of 
the province. 

I'he very bustle of a railway, with its crowd and quickness 


THE PARISIANS. 


39 


and unceremonious democracy of travel, served to pain and 
confound and humiliate that sense of individual dignity in 
which he had been nurtured. He felt that, once away from 
Rochebriant, he was but a cipher in the sum of human 
beings. Arrived at Paris, and reaching the gloomy hotel to 
which he had been recommended, he greeted even the deso- 
lation of that solitude which is usually so oppressive to a 
stranger in the metropolis of his native land. Loneliness was 
better than the loss of self in the reek and pressure of an 
unfamiliar throng. For the first few days he had wandered 
over Paris without calling even on the avoue to whom M. 
Hubert had directed him. He felt with the instinctive acute- 
ness of a mind which, under sounder training, would have 
achieved no mean distinction, that it was a safe precaution to 
imbue himself with the atmosphere of the place, seize on 
those general ideas which in great capitals are so contagious 
that they are often more accurately caught by the first im- 
pressions than by subsequent habit, before he brought his 
mind into contact with those of the individuals he had prac- 
tically to deal with. 

At last he repaired to the avoue ^ M. Gandrin, Rue St. 
Florentin. He had mechanically formed his idea of the 
abode and person of an avou6 from his association with M. 
Hebert. He expected to find a dull house in a dull street 
near the centre of business, remote from the haunts of idlers, 
and a grave man of unpretending exterior and matured years. 

He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly decorated, in 
the fashionable quartier close by the Tuileries. He entered 
a wide 'porte-cochlre^ and was directed by the concierge to 


40 


THE PARISIANS 


• mount au 'premier. There, first detained in an office fault- 
lessly neat, with spruce young men at smart desks, he was at 
length admitted into a noble salon, and into the presence of 
a gentleman lounging in an easy-chair before a magnificent 
bureau of marqueterie, genre Louis Seize, engaged in patting 
a white curly lapdog, with a pointed nose and a shrill bark. 

The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, and released 
the dog, who, after sniffing the Marquis, condescended not to 
bite. 

“ Monsieur le Marquis,” said M. Grandrin, glancing at the 
card and the introductory note from M. Hubert, which Alain 
had sent in, and which lay on the secretaire beside heaps of 
letters nicely arranged and labeled, “ charmed to make the 
honor of your acquaintance ; just arrived at Paris ? So M. 
Hebert — a very worthy person, whom I have never seen, but 
with whom I have had correspondence — tells me you wish for 
my advice ; in fact, he wrote to me some days ago, mention- 
ing the business in question — consolidation of mortgages. A 
very large sum wanted. Monsieur le Marquis, and not to be 
had easily.” 

“ Nevertheless,” said Alain, quietly, “ I should imagine 
that there must be many capitalists in Paris willing to invest 
in good securities at fair interest.” 

“ You are mistaken, Marquis ; very few such capitalists. 
Men worth money nowadays like quick returns and large 
profits, thanks to the magnificent system of Cridit Mobilier, 
in which, as you are aware, a man may place his money in 
any trade or speculation without liabilities beyond his share. 
Capitalists are nearly all traders or speculators.” 


THE P A R I S I A N S. 


41 


•• Then,” said the Marquis, half rising, “ I am to presume, 
bir, that you are not likely to assist me.” 

“ No, I don’t say that. Marquis. I will look with care into 
the matter. Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the 
necessary documents, the conditions of the present mortgages, 
the rental of the estate, its probable prospects, and so forth.” 

“ Sir, I have such an abstract with me at Paris ; and, hav- 
ing gone into it myself with M. Hebert, I can pledge you my 
■ word that it is strictly faithful to the facts.” 

The Marquis said this with naive simplicity, as if his words 
were quite sufficient to set that part of the question at rest. 

M. Gandrin smiled politely and said, “ Eh hien^ M. le Mar- 
quis, favor me with the abstract ; in a week’s time you shall 
have my opinion. You enjoy Paris? Greatly improved 
under the Emperor ; the salons^ indeed, are hardly open yet. 
A propoSy Madame Gandrin receives to-morrow evening; 
allow me that opportunity to present you to her.” 

Unprepared for the proffered hospitality, the Marquis had 
no option but to murmur his gratification and assent. 

In a minute more he was in the streets. The next even- 
ing he went to Madame Gandrin ’s — a brilliant reception — a 
whole moving flower-bed of “ decorations” there. Having 
gone through the ceremony of presentation to Madame Gan- 
drin — a handsome woman dressed to perfection, and convers- 
ing with the secretary to an embassy — the young noble en- 
sconced himself in an obscure and quiet corner, observing all, 
and imagining that he escaped observation. And as the 
young men of his own years glided by him, or as their talk 
reached his ears, he became aware that from top to toe, within 


42 


THE PARISIANS. 


and without, he was old-fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, 
not of his day. His rank itself seemed to him a waste-paper 
title-deed to a heritage long lapsed. Not thus the princely 
seigneurs of Rochebriant made their dehut at the capital of 
their nation. They had had the entrie to the cabinets of 
their kings; they had glittered in the halls of Versailles; 
they had held high posts of distinction in court and camp ; 
the great Order of St. Louis had seemed their hereditary 
appanage. His father, though a voluntary exile in manhood, 
had been in childhood a king’s page, and throughout life 
remained the associate of princes ; and here, in an avou^^s 
soiree^ unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an avou6\ 
patronage, stood the last lord of Rochebriant. 

It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay long. But 
he stayed long enough to convince him that on £200 a year 
the polite society of Paris, even as seen at M. G-andrin’s, was 
not for him. Nevertheless, a day or two after, he resolved ‘to 
call upon the nearest of his kinsmen to whom his aunt had 
given him letters. With the Count de Vandemar, one of his 
fellow-nobles of the sacred Faubourg, he should be no less 
Rochebriant whether in a garret or a palace. The Vande- 
mars, in fact, though for many generations before the First 
Revolution a puissant and brilliant family, had always recog- 
nized the Rochebriants as the head of their house — the trunk 
from which they had been slipped in the fifteenth century, 
when a younger son of the Rochebriants married a wealthy 
heiress and took the title, with the lands of Vandemar. 

Since then the two families had often intermarried. The 
present Count had a reputation for ability, was himself a large 


propj ietor, and might furnish advice to guide him with M. 
Gandrin. The Hotel de Vandemar stood facing the old Hotel 
de Rochebriant ; it was less spacious, but not less venerable, 
gloomy, and prison-like. 

As he turned his eyes from the armorial scutcheon which 
still rested though chipped and mouldering, over the portals 
of his lost ancestral house, and was about to cross the street, 
two young men, who seemed two or three years older than 
himself, emerged on horseback from the Hotel de Vandemar. 

Handsome young men, with the lofty look of the old race, 
dressed with the punctilious care of person which is not 
foppery in men of birth, but seems part of the self-respect 
that appertains to the old chivalric point of honor. The 
horse of one of these cavaliers made a caracole which brought 
it nearly upon Alain as he was about to cross. The rider, 
checking his steed, lifted his hat to Alain and uttered a word 
of apology in the courtesy of ancient high-breeding, but still 
with condescension as to an inferior. V^his little incident, 
and the slighting kind of notice received from coevals of his 
own birth, and doubtless his own blood — for he divined truly 
that they were the sons of the Count de Vandemar — discon- 
certed Alain to a degree which perhaps a Frenchman alone 
can comprehend. He had even half a mind to give up his 
visit and turn back. However, his native manhood prevailed 
over that morbid sensitiveness which, born out of the union 
of pride and poverty, has all the effects of vanity, and yet is 
not vanity itself. 

The Count was at home, a thin spare man with a narrow 
but high forehead, and an expression of countenance keen, 
severe, and un peu moqueuse. 


44 


THE PARISIANS. 


He received the Marquis, however, at first with great cor- 
diality, kissed him on both sides of his cheek, called him 
“ cousin,” expressed immeasurable regret that the Countess 
was gone out on one of the missions of charity in which the 
great ladies of the Faubourg religiously interest themselves, 
and that his sons had just ridden forth to the Bois. 

As Alain, however, proceeded, simply and without false 
shame, to communicate the object of his visit at Paris, the 
extent of his liabilities, and the penury of his means, the 
smile vanished from the Count’s face; he somewhat drew 
back his fauteuil in the movement common to men who wish 
to estrange themselves from some other man’s difficulties ; 
and when Alain came to a close, the Count remained some 
moments seized with a slight cough ; and, gazing intently on the 
carpet, at length he said, “ My dear young friend, your father 
behaved extremely ill to you — dishonorably, fraudulently.” 

“ Hold !” said the Marquis, coloring high. “ Those are 
words no man can apply to my father in my presence.” 

The Count stared, shrugged his shoulders, and replied with 
sang froid — 

“ Marquis, if you are contented with your father’s conduct, 
of course it is no business of mine ; he never injured me. I 
presume, however, that, considering my years and my charac- 
ter, you come to me for advice — is it so ?” 

Alain bowed his head in assent. 

“ There are four courses for one in your position to take,” 
said the Count, placing the index of the right hand succes- 
sively on the thumb and three fingers of the left — “four 
courses, and no more. 


THE PARISIANS. 


45 


“ 1st. To do as your notary recommended : consolidate 
your mortgages, patch up your income as you best can, return 
to Rochebriant, and devote the rest of your existence to the 
preservation of your property. By that course your life will 
be one of permanent privation, severe struggle ; and the proba- 
bility is that you will not succeed : there will come one or two 
bad seasons, the farmers will fail to pay, the mortgaged will 
foreclose, and you may find yourself, after twenty years of 
anxiety and torment, prematurely old and without a sou. 

“ Course the 2d. Rochebriant, though so heavily incum- 
bered as to yield you some such income as your father gave 
to his chef de cuisine^ is still one of those superb terres which 
bankers and Jews and stock-jobbers court and hunt after, for 
which they will give enormous sums. K you place it in good 
hands, I do not doubt that you could dispose of the property 
within three months, on terms that would leave you a con- 
siderable surplus, which, invested with judgment, would 
afford you whereon you could live at Paris in a way suitable 
to your rank and age. — Need we go further? — does this 
course smile to you ?” 

“ Pass on. Count ; I will defend to the last what I take 
from my ancestors, and cannot voluntarily sell their roof-tree 
and their tombs.” 

Your name would still remain, and you would be just as 
well received in Paris, and your noblesse just as implicitly con- 
ceded, if all Judea encamped upon Rochebriant. Consider 
how few of us gentilshommes of the old rigime have any" 
domains left to us. Our names alone survive ; no revolution 
can efface them.^' 


46 


THE PARISLANS. 


“ It may be so, but pardon me ; there are subjects on which 
we cannot reason — we can but feel. Rochebriant may be torn 
from me, but I cannot yield it.” 

“I proceed to the third course. Keep the chateau and 
give up its traditions ; remain de facto Marquis of Roche- 
briant, but accept the new order of things. Make yourself 
known to the people in power. They will be charmed to 
welcome you ; — a convert from the old noblesse is a guarantee 
of stability of the new system. . You will be placed in diplo- 
macy ; effloresce into an ambassador, a minister — and minis- 
ters nowadays have opportunities to become enormously rich.” 

“ That course is not less impossible than the last. Till’ 
Henry V. formally resign his right to the throne of St. Louis, 
I can be servant to no other man seated on that throne.” 

“ Such, too, is my creed,” said the Count, “and I cling to 
it ; but my estate is not mortgaged, and I have neither the 
tastes nor the age for public employments. The last course is 
perhaps better than the rest ; at all events it is the easiest. A 
wealthy marriage ; even if it must be a misalliance. I think 
at your age, with your appearance, that your name is worth at 
least two million francs in the eyes of a rich roturier with an 
ambitious daughter.” 

“ Alas !” said the young man, rising, “ I see I shall have 
to go back to Rochebriant. I cannot sell my castle, I cannot 
sell my creed, and I cannot sell my name and myself.” 

“ The last all of us did in the old rigime^ Marquis. Though 
I still retain the title of Vandemar, my property comes from 
the Farmer-General’s daughter whom my great-grandfather, 
happily for us, married in the days of Louis Quinze. Mar- 


THE PARISIANS. 


47 


riages with people of sense and rank have always been mor 
riages de convenance in France. It is only in le petit monde 
that men having nothing marry girls having nothing, and I 
don’t believe they are a bit the happier for it. On the con- 
trary, the quarrels de minage leading to frightful crimes 
appear by the Gazette des Tnbunaux^ to be chiefly found 
among those who do not sell themselves at the altar.” 

The old Count said this with a grim persiflage. He was a 
Voltairian. 

Voltairianism deserted by the modern Liberals of France 
has its chief cultivation nowadays among the wits of the 
old regime. They pick up its light weapons on the battle- 
field on which their fathers perished, and re-feather against 
the canaille the shafts which had been pointed against the 
noblesse. 

“ Adieu, Count,” said Alain, rising ; “ I do not thank you 
less for your advice because I have not the wit to profit by it.” 

“Alt revoir^ my cousin ; you will think better of it when 
you have been a month or two at Paris. By the way, my 
wife receives every Wednesday; consider our house yours.” 

“ Count, can I enter into the world which Madame la 
Comtesse receives, in the way that becomes my birth, on the 
income I take from my fortune?” 

The Count hesitated. “ No,” said he at last, frankly ; 
“ not because you will be less welcome or less respected, but 
because I see that you have all the pride and sensitiveness of 
a seigneur de province. Society would therefore give you pain, 
not pleasure. More than this, I know by the rememl ranee 
of my own youth, and the sad experience of my own sons, 


48 


THE PARISIANS. 


that you would be irresistibly led into debt ; and debt in your 
circumstances would be the loss of Rochebriant. No; I 
invite you to visit us. I offer you the most select but not 
the most brilliant circles of Paris, because my wife is reli- 
gious, and frightens away the birds of gay plumage with the 
scarecrows of priests and bishops. But if you accept my 
iavitation and my offer, I am bound, as an old man of the 
world to a young kinsman, to say that the chances are that 
you will be ruined.” 

“ I thank you. Count, for your candor ; and I now ac- 
knowledge that I have found a relation and a guide,” answered 
the Marquis, with a nobility of mien that was not without a 
pathos which touched the hard heart of the old man. 

“ Come at least whenever you want a sincere if a rude friend ;” 
and though he did not kiss his cousin’s cheek this time, he 
gave him, with more sincerity, a parting shake of the hand. 

And these made the principal events in Alain’s Paris life 
till he met Frederic Lemercier. Hitherto he had received no 
definite answer from M. Gandrin, who had postponed an in- 
terview, not having had leisure to make himself master of all 
the details in the abstract sent to him. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, towards the afternoon, Frederic Lemercier, 
somewhat breathless from the rapidity at which he had as- 
cended to so high an eminence, burst into Alain’s chamber. 


THE PARISIANS. 


49 


^^Pr-r! monclier; what superb exercise for the health — 
how it must strengthen the muscles and expand the chest! 
after this, who should shrink from scaling Mont Blanc? — 
Well, well. I have been meditating on your business ever 
since we parted. But I would fain know more of its details. 
You shall confide them to me as we drive through the Bois. 
My coupe is below, and the day is beautiful — come.” 

To the young Marquis, the gayety, the heartiness of his 
college friend were a cordial. How different from the dry 
counsels of the Count de Vandemar ! Hope, though vaguely, 
entered into his heart. Willingly he accepted Frederic’s 
invitation, and the young men were soon rapidly borne along 
the Champs Elysees. As briefly as he could, Alain described 
the state of his affairs, the nature of his mortgages, and the 
result of his interview with M. Handrin. 

Frederic listened attentively. “ Then Handrin has given 
you as yet no answer?” - 

“ None : but I have a note from him this morning asking 
me to call to-morrow.” 

“ After you have seen him, decide on nothing — if he makes 
you any offer, get back your abstract, or a copy of it, and con- 
fide it to me. Grandrin ought to help you ; he transacts affairs 
in a large way. Belle clientele among the millionaires. But 
his clients expect fabulous profits, and so does he. As for 
youi principal mortgagee, Louvier, you know of course who 
he is.” 

“ No, except that M. Hubert told me that he was very rich.” 

Rich — I should think so ; one of the Kings of Finance. 
Ah 1 observe those young men on horseback.” 

VoL. I.— c 4 


50 


THE P A II I S I A N S. 


Alain looked forth and recognized the two cavaliers whom 
he had conjectured to be the sons of the Count de Vandemar. 

“ Those heaiix gar<;ons are fair specimens of your Fau- 
bourg,” said Frederic; “they would decline my acquaintance 
because my grandfather kept a shop, and they keep a shop 
between them !” 

“ A shop — I am mistaken, then. Who are they ?” 

“ Kaoul and Enguerrand, sons of that mocker of man the 
Count de Yandemar.” 

“And they keep a shop ! you are jesting.” 

“ A shop at which you may buy gloves and perfumes. Rue 
de la Chaussee d’Antin. Of course they don’t serve at the 
counter ; they only invest their pocket-money in the specula- 
tion, and in so doing — treble at least their pocket-money, 
buy their horses, and keep their grooms.” 

“ Is it possible ! nobles of such birth ! How shocked the 
Count would be if he knew it !” 

“ Yes, very much shocked if he was supposed to know it. 
But he is too wise a father not to give his sons limited allow- 
ances and unlimited liberty, especially the liberty to add to 
the allowances as they please. Look again at them ; no better 
riders and more aifectionate brothers since the date of Castor 
and Pollux. Their tastes, indeed, dilfer: Raoul is religious 
and moral, melancholy and dignified ; Enguerrand is a lion of 
the first water , — elegant to the tips of his nails. These demi- 
gods are nevertheless very mild to mortals. Though Enguer- 
rand is the best pistol-shot in Paris, and Raoul the best fencer, 
the first is so good-tempered that you would be a brute to 
quarrel with him ; the last so true a Catholic, that if you 


THE PARISIANS. 


51 


quaxi-eled with him you need not fear his sword. He would 
not die in the committal of what the Church holds a mortal 
sin.” 

^‘Are you speaking ironically? Do you mean to imply 
that men of the name of Yandemar are not brave?” 

“ On the contrary, I believe that, though masters of their 
weapons, they are too brave to abuse their skill ; and I must 
add, that though they are sleeping partners in a shop, they 
would not cheat you of a farthing. — Benign stars on earth, 
as Castor and Pollux were in heaven.” 

“ But partners in a shop !” 

“ Bah ! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M , 

kept a shop, and added the profits of bonbons to his revenue^ 
you may form some idea of the spirit of the age. If young 
nobles are not generally sleeping partners in shops, still they 
are more or less adventurers in commerce. The Bourse is the 
profession of those who have no other profession. You have 
visited the Bourse f' 

“ No.” 

“No! this is just the hour; we have time yet for the 
Bois. — Coachman, drive to the Bourse^ 

“ The fact is,” resumed Frederic, “ that gambling is one of 
the wants of civilized men. The rouge-et-noir and roulette 
tables are forbidden — the hells closed; but the passion for 
making money without working for it must have its vent, 
and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a hundred wax- 
lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred 
hells you have now one Bourse^ and — it is exceedingly con- 
venient ; always at hand ; no discredit being seen there, as it 


52 


THE PARISIANS. 


was to be seen at Frascati’s — on the contrary, at once respect- 
able, and yet the mode." 

The coupe stops at the Bourse^ our friends mount the steps, 
glide through the pillars, deposit their canes at a place des- 
tined to guard them, and the Marquis follows Frederic up a 
flight of stairs till he gains the open gallery round a vast hall 
below. Such a din ! such a clamor ! disputatious, wrangling, 
wrathful. 

Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, whom he joined 
for a few minutes. 

Alain, left alone, looked down into the hall. He thought 
himself in some stormy scene of the First Revolution. An 
English contested election in the market-place of a borough 
when the candidates are running close on each other, the 
result doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough in civil 
war, is peaceful compared to the scene at the Bourse. 

Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulating, as if one 
were about to strangle the other ; the whole, to an uninitiated 
eye, a confusion, a Babel, which it seems absolutely impossi- 
ble to reconcile to the notion of quiet mercantile transactions, 
the purchase and sale of shares and stocks. As Alain gazed 
bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, and, looking round, 
saw the Englishman. 

“A lively scene 1” whispered Mr. Yane. “This is the 
heart of Paris : it beats very loudly.” 

“ Is your Bourse in London like this ?” 

“ I cannot tell you ; at our Exchange the general public are 
not admitted ; the privileged priests of that temple sacrifice 
their victims in closed penetralia, beyond which the sounds 


THE PARISIANS. 


53 


made in tlie operation do not travel to ears profane. But had 
we an Exchange, like this, open to all the world, and placed, 
not in a region of our metropolis unknown to fashion, but in 
some elegant square in St. James’s or at Hyde Park Corner, 
I suspect that our national character would soon undergo a 
great change, and that all our idlers and sporting-men would 
make their books there every day, instead of waiting long 
months in ennui for the Doncaster and the Derby. At present 
we have but few men on the turf ; we should then have few 
men not on Exchange, especially if we adopt your law, and 
can contrive to be traders without risk of becoming bankrupts. 
Napoleon I. called us a shopkeeping nation. Napoleon III. 
has taught France to excel us in everything, and certainly he 
has made Paris a shopkeeping city.” 

Alain thought of Baoul and Enguerrand, and blushed to 
find that what he considered a blot on his countrymen was so 
familiarly perceptible to a foreigner’s eye. 

“ And the Emperor has done wisely, at least for the time,” 
continued the Englishman, with a more thoughtful accent. 
“ He has found vent thus for that very dangerous class in 
Paris society to which the subdivision of property gave birth 
— viz., the crowd of well-born, daring young men without 
fortune and without profession. He has opened the Bourse 
and said, ‘ There, I give you employment, resource, an avenir' 
He has cleared the byways into commerce and trade, and 
opened new avenues of wealth to the nohlesse^ whom the great 
Bevolution so unwisely beggared. What- other way to re- 
build a nohlesse in France, and give it a chance of power be- 
cause an access to fortune ! But to how many sides of your 


54 


THE PARISIANS. 


national character has the Bourse of Paris magnetic attrac- 
tion ! You Frenchmen are so brave that you could not be 
happy without facing danger, so covetous of distinction that 
you would pine yourselves away without a dash, coute que coute^ 
at celebrity and a red ribbon. Danger ! look below at that 
arena — there it is ; danger daily, hourly. But there also is 
celebrity ; win at the Bourse^ as of old in a tournament, and 
paladins smile on you, and ladies give you their scarves, or, 
what is much the same, they allow you to buy their cache- 
mires. Win at the Bourse — what follows? the Chamber, 
the Senate, the Cross, the s porte-feidlle. I might 

rejoice in all this for the sake of Europe — could it last, and 
did it not bring the consequences that follow the demoralization 
which attends it. The Bourse and the Gridit Mohilier keep 
Paris quiet — at least as quiet as it can be. These are the 
secrets of this reign of splendor ; these the two lions couchants 
on which rests the throne of the Imperial reconstructor.” 

Alain listened, surprised and struck. He had not given 
the Englishman credit for the cast of mind which such reflec- 
tions evinced. 

Here Lemercier rejoined them, and shook hands with 
Graham Vane, who, taking him aside, said, “ But you prom- 
ised to go to the Bois and indulge my insane curiosity about 
the lady in the pearl-colored robe?” 

“ I have not forgotten ; it is not half-past two yet ; you said 
three. Soyez tranquille ; I drive thither from the Bourse with 
Rochebriant.” 

“Is it necessary to take with you that very good-looking 
Marquis ?” 


THE P A 11 1 S 1 A N S. 


55 


“ I thought you said you were not jealous, because not yet 
in love. However, if Rochebriant occasions you the pang 
which your humble servant failed to inflict, I will take care 
that he do not see the lady.’' 

“No,” said the Englishman; “on consideration, I should 
be very much obliged to any one with whom she would fall 
in love. That would disenchant me. Take the Marquis by 
all means.” 

Meanwhile Alain, again looking down, saw just under him, 
close by one of the pillars, Lucien Duplessis. He was stand- 
ing apart from the throng — a small space cleared roui^d him- 
self and two men who had the air of gentlemen of the heau 
monde, with whom he was conferring. Duplessis thus seen 
was not like the Duplessis at the restaurant. It would be 
difficult to explain what the change was, but it forcibly struck 
Alain : the air was more dignified, the expression keener ; 
there was a look of conscious power and command aoout the 
man even at that distance ; the intense, concentrated intelli- 
gence of his eye, his firm lip, his marked features, his pro- 
jecting, massive brow, would have impressed a very ordinary 
observer. In fact, the man was here in his native element — 
in the field in which his intellect gloried, commanded, and 
had signalized itself by successive triumphs. Just thus may 
be the change in the great orator whom you deemed insignifi- 
cant in a drawing-room, when you see his crest rise above a 
reverential audience ; or the great soldier, who was not dis- 
tinguishable from the subaltern in a peaceful club, could you 
gee him issuing the order to his aides-de-camp amidst the 
smoke and roar of the battle-field. 


56 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Ah, Marquis!” said Graham Vane, “are you gazing at 
Duplessis ? He is the modern genius of Paris. He is at 
once the Cousin, the Guizot, and the Victor Hugo of specu- 
lation. Philosophy — Eloquence — audacious Pomance, — all 
Literature now is swallowed up in the sublime epic of Agio- 
tage, and Duplessis is the poet of the Empire.” 

“Well said, M. Grarm Varn,” cried Frederic, forgetting • 
his recent lesson in English names. “ Alain underrates that 
great man. How could an Englishrnan appreciate him so 
well?” 

^Ala/oiT' returned Graham, quietly, “I am studying to 
think at Paris, in order some day or other to know how to 
act in London. Time for the Bois. Lemercier, we meet at 
seven — Philippe’s.” 


CHAPTER V. 

“What do you think of the Bourse asked Lemercier, 
as their carriage took the way to the Bois. 

“ I cannot think of it yet ; I am stunned. It seems to me 
as if I had been at a Sabbat, of which the wizards were agents 
de change, but not less bent upon raising Satan.” 

Pooh 1 the best way to exorcise Satan is to get rich 
enough not to be tempted by him. The fiend always loved to 
haunt empty places ; and of all places nowadays he prefers 
empty purses and empty stomachs.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


57 


“ But do all people get rich at the Bourse ? or is not one 
man’s wealth many men’s ruin?” 

“ That is a question not very easy to answer ; but under 
our present system Paris gets rich, though at the expense of 
individual Parisians. I will try and explain. The average 
luxury is enormously increased even in my experience ; what 
were once considered refinements and fopperies are now called 
necessary comforts. Prices are risen enormously, — house-rent 
doubled within the last five or six years ; all articles of luxury 
are very much dearer ; the very gloves I wear cost twenty per 
cent, more than I used to pay for gloves of the same quality. 
How the people we meet live, and live so well, is an enigma 
that would defy (Edipus if (Edipus were not a Parisian. But 
the main explanation is this : speculation and commerce, with 
the facilities given to all investments, have really opened more 
numerous and more rapid ways to fortune than were known a 
few years ago. 

“ Crowds are thus attracted to Paris, resolved to venture a 
small capital in the hope of a large one ; they live on that 
capital, not on their income, as gamesters do. There is an 
idea among us that it is necessary to seem rich in order to be- 
come rich. Thus there is a general extravagance and profu- 
sion. English milords marvel at our splendor. Those who, 
while spending •their capital as their income, fail in their 
schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years — 
vanish. What becomes of them I know no more than I do 
what becomes of the old moons. Their place is immediately 
supplied by new candidates. Paris is thus kept perennially 
sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs. But then 
c* 


58 


THE PARISIANS. 


some men succeed — -succeed prodigiously, preternaturally ; 
they make colossal fortunes, which are magnificently expended. 
They set an example of show and pomp, which is of course 
the more contagious because so many men say, ‘ The other 
day those millionaires were as poor as we are; they never 
economized ; why should we ?’ Paris is thus doubly enriched 
— by the fortunes it swallows up, and by the fortunes it easts 
up ; the last being always reproductive, and the first never 
lost except to the individuals.” 

“ I understand : but what struck me forcibly at the scene 
we have left was the number of young men there ; young 
men whom I should judge by their appearance to be gentle- 
men, evidently not mere spectators — eager, anxious, with 
tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged men should 
find a zest in the pursuit of gain I can understand, but youth 
and avarice seems to me a new combination, which Moliere 
never divined in his ‘ Avare' ” 

“ Young men, especially if young gentlemen, love pleasure ; 
and pleasure in this city is very dear. This explains why so 
many young men frequent the Bourse. In the old gaming- 
tables now suppressed, young men were the majority ; in the 
days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young nobles, 
not the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords 
on a cast of the die. And naturally enough, mon clier ; for 
is not youth the season of hope, and is not hope the goddess 
of gaming, whether at rouge et noir or the Bourse f ’ 

Alain felt himself more and more behind his generation. 
The acute reasoning of Lemercier humbled his amour-propre. 
At college Lemercier was never considered Alain’s equal in 


THE r A R I S I A N «. 


59 


ability or book-learning. What a stride beyond his school- 
fellow had Lemercier now made ! How dull and stupid the 
young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy 
cleverness and half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian’s fluent 
talk ! 

He sighed with a melancholy and yet with a generous envy. 
He had too fine a natural perception not to acknowledge that 
there is a rank of mind as well as of birth, and in the first 
he felt that Lemercier might well walk before a Pochebriant ; 
but his very humility was a proof that he underrated himself. 

Lemercier did not excel him in mind, but in experience 
And just as the drilled soldier seems a much finer fellow than 
the raw recruit, because he knows how to carry himself, but 
after a year’s discipline the raw recruit may excel in martial 
air the upright hero whom he now despairingly admires, and 
never dreams he can rival ; so set a mind from a village into 
the drill of a capital, and see it a year after ; it may tower a 
head higher than its recruiting sergeant. 


CHAPTEK VI. 

“ I BELIEVE,” said Lemercier, as the cowpi rolled through 
the lively alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, “ that Paris is built 
on a loadstone, and that every Frenchman with some iron 
globules in his blood is irresistibly attracted towards it. The 
English never seem to feel for London the passionate devotion 
that we feel for Paris. On the contrary, the London middle 


60 


THE PARISIANS. 


class, tlie commercialists, the shopkeepers, the clerks, even 
the superior artisans compelled to do their business in the 
capital, seem always scheming and pining to have their home 
out of it, though but in a suburb.” 

“ You have been in London, Frederic ?” 

“ Of course ; it is the mode to visit that dull and hideous 
metropolis.” 

“ If it be dull and hideous, no wonder the people who are 
compelled to do business in it seek the pleasures of home out 
of it.” 

“ It is very droll that though the middle class entirely 
govern the melancholy Albion, it is the only country in Eu- 
rope in which the middle class seem to have no amusements ; 
nay, they legislate against amusement. They have no leisure 
day but Sunday ; and on that day they close all their theatres, 
— even their museums and picture-galleries. What amuse- 
ments there may be in England are for the higher classes and 
the lowest.” 

“ What are the amusements of the lowest class ?” 

•• Getting drunk.” 

“ Nothing else ?” 

“ Yes, I was taken at night under protection of a policeman 
to some cabarets^ where I found crowds of that class which 
is the stratum below the working class ; lads who sweep cross- 
ings and hold horses, mendicants, and, I was told, thieves, 
girls whom a servant-maid would not speak to — very merry — 
dancing quadrilles and waltzes, and regaling themselves on 
sausages — the happiest-looking folks I found in all London— 
and, I must say, conducting themselves very decently. 


THE PARISIANS. 


61 


“ Ah r Here Lemercier pulled the check-string. “ Will 
you object- to a walk in this quiet alley? I see some one 
whom I have promised the Englishman to — But heed me, 
Alain ; don’t fall in love with her.” 


CHAPTEK VIL 

The lady in the pearl-colored dress ! Certainly it was a 
face that might well arrest the eye and linger long on the 
remembrance. 

There are certain “beauty-women,” as ^ there are certain 
“ beauty-men,” in whose features one detects no fault — who 
are the show figures of any assembly in which they appear — 
but who, somehow or other, inspire ^ no sentiment and excite 
no interest ; they lack some expression, whether of mind, or 
of soul, or of heart, without which the most beautiful face 
is but a beautiful picture. This lady was not one of those 
“ beauty- women.” Her features taken singly were by no 
means perfect, nor were they set off by any brilliancy of 
coloring. But the countenance aroused and impressed the 
imagination with a belief that there was some history attached 
to it which you longed to learn. The hair, simply parted 
over a forehead unusually spacious and high for a woman, was 
of lustrous darkness ; the eyes, of a deep violet blue, were 
shaded with long lashes. 

Their expression was soft and mournful, but unobservant. 
She did not notice Alain and Lemercier as the two men slowly 


62 


THE PARISIANS. 


passed her. She seemed abstracted, gazing into space as one 
absoibed in thought or reverie. Her complexion was clear 
and pale, and apparently betokened delicate health. 

Lemercier seated himself on a bench beside the path, and 
invited Alain to do the same. “ She will return this way 
soon,” said the Parisian, “ and we can observe her more atten- 
tively and more respectfully thus seated than if we were on 
foot; meanwhile, what do you think of her? Is she French 
— is she Italian? — can she be English?” 

“ I should have guessed Italian, judging by the darkness 
of the hair and the outline of the features ; but do Italians 
have so delicate a fairness of complexion ?” 

“ Very rarely ; and I should guess her to be French, judg- 
ing by the intelligence of her expression, the simple neatness 
of her dress, and by that nameless refinement of air in which 
a Parisienne excels all the descendants of Eve — if it were 
not for her eyes. I never saw a Frenchwoman with eyes of 
that peculiar shade of blue; and if a Frenchwoman had such 
eyes, I flatter myself she would have scarcely allowed us to 
pass without making some use of them.” 

“Do you think she is married?” asked Alain. 

“ I hope so — for a girl of her age, if comme il faut^ can 
scarcely walk alone in the Bois, and would not have acquired 
that look so intelligent — more than intelligent — so poetic.” 

“ But regard that air of unmistakable distinction, regard 
that expression of face — so pure, so virginal : comme il faut 
she must be.” 

As Alain said these last words, the lady, who had turned 
back, was approaching them, and in full view of their gaze. 


THE PARISIANS. 


63 


She seemed unconscious of their existence as before, and 
Lemercier noticed that her lips moved as if she were mur- 
muring inaudibly to herself. 

She did not return again, but continued her walk straight 
on till at the end of the alley she entered a carriage in wait- 
ing for her, and was driven off. 

“ Quick, quick I” cried Lemercier, running towards his own 
coupe ; “we must give chase.” 

Alain followed somewhat less hurriedly, and, agreeably to 
instructions Lemercier had already given to his coachman, the 
Parisian’s coupS set off at full speed in the track of the strange 
lady’s, which was still in sight. 

In less than twenty minutes the carriage in chase stopped 
at the priUe of one of those charming little villas to be found 

in the pleasant suburb of A ; a porter emerged from the 

lodge, opened the gate ; the carriage drove in, again stopped 
at the door of the house, and the two gentlemen could not 
latch even a glimpse of the lady’s robe as she descended from 
i he carriage and disappeared within the house. 

“ I see a cafe yonder,” said Lemercier ; “ let us learn all 
we can as to the fair unknown, over a wrhet or petit verre^ 

Alain silently, but not reluctantly, consented. He felt in 
the fair stranger an interest new to his existence. 

They entered the little cafS, and in a few minutes Lemer- 
cier^ with the easy savoir-vivre of a Parisian, had extracted 
from the pardon as much as probably any one in the neigh- 
borhood knew of the inhabitants of the villa. 

It had been hired and furnished about two months pre- 
viously in the name of Signora Venosta; but, according to 


64 


THE PARISIANS. 


the report of the servants, that lady appeared to be the gouver- 
nante or guardian of a lady much younger, out of whose in- 
come the villa was rented and the household maintained. 

It was for her the coupe was hired from Paris. The elder 
lady very rarely stirred out during the day, buPalways accom- 
panied the younger in any evening visits to the theatre or the 
houses of friends. 

It was only within the last few weeks that such visits had 
been made. 

The younger lady was in delicate health, and under the 
care of an English physician famous for skill in the treatment 
of pulmonary complaints. It was by bis advice that she took 
daily walking exercise in the Bois. The establishment con- 
sisted of three servants, all Italians, and speaking but imper- 
fect French. . The gargon did not know whether either of the 
ladies was married, but their mode of life was free from all 
scandal or suspicion ; they probably belonged to the literary 
or musical world, as the gargon had observed as their visitor 
the eminent author M. Savarin and his wife, and, still more 
frequently, an old man not less eminent as a musical composer. 

“ It is clear to me now,” said Lemercier, as the two friends 
reseated themselves in the carriage, “ that our pearly ange is 
some Italian singer of repute enough in her own country to 
have gained already a competence ; and that, perhaps on ac- 
count of her own health or her friend’s, she is living quietly 
here in the expectation of some professional engagement, or 
the absence of some foreign lover.” 

“ Lover! do you think that?” exclaimed Alain, in a tone 
of voice that betrayed pain. 


THE PARISIANS. 


G5 


“ It is possible enough ; and in that case the Englishman 
may profit little by the information I have promised to give 
him.” 

“ You have promised the Englishman ?” 

“ Do you not remember last night that he described the 
lady, and said that her face haunted him ; and I ” 

“ Ah ! I remember now. What do you know of this Eng- 
lishman ? He is rich, I suppose.” 

“ Yes, I hear he is very rich now ; that an uncle lately left 
him an enormous sum of money. He was attached to the 
English Embassy many years ago, which accounts for his good 
French and his knowledge of Parisian life. He comes to 
Paris very often, and I have known him some time. Indeed, 
he has intrusted to me a difficult and delicate commission. 
The English tell me that his father was one of the most emi- 
nent members of their Parliament, of ancient birth, very 
highly connected, but ran out his fortune and died poor ; that 
our friend had for some years to maintain himself, I fancy, by 
his pen ; that he is considered very able ; and, now that his 
uncle has enriched him, likely to enter public life and run a 
career as distinguished as his father’s.” 

“ Happy man ! happy are the English,” said the Marquis, 
with a sigh ; and as the carriage now entered Paris, he 
pleaded the excuse of an engagement, bade his friend good- 
by, and went his way musing through the crowded streets. 


6 


CHAPTER YIIL 


. LETTER JROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANT- 
MESNIL. 

Villa D’ , A . 

\ 

I CAN never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange 
charm which a letter from you throws over my poor little 
lonely world for days after it is received. There is always in 
it something that comforts, something that sustains, but also 
a something that troubles and disquiets me. I suppose 
Goethe is right, “ that it is the property of true genius to 
disturb all settled ideas,” in order, no doubt, to lift them into 
a higher level when they settle down again. 

Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the 
orange-groves of Provence interests me intensely ; yet, do you 
forgive me when I add that the interest is not without terror? 
I do not find myself able to comprehend how, amid those 
lovely scenes of nature, your mind voluntarily surrounds 
itself with images of pain and discord. I stand in awe of 
the calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmi- 
ties of reason and the tumults of passion. And all those 
laws of the social state which seem to me so fixed and im- 
movable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as if they were but 
the gossamer threads which a touch of your slight woman’s 
hand could brush away. But I cannot venture to discuss 
such subjects with you. It is only the skilled enchanter who 
66 


THE PARISIANS. 


67 


can stand safely in the magic circle, and compel the spirits 
that he summons, even if they are evil, to minister to ends in 
which he foresees a good. 

We continue to live here very quietly, and I do not as yet 
feel the worse for the colder climate. Indeed, my wonderful 
doctor, who was recommended to me as American, but is in 
reality English, assures me that a single winter spent here 
under his care will suffice for my complete re-establishment. 
Yet that career, to the training for which so many years have 
been devoted, does not seem t-o me so alluring as it once did. 

I have much to say on this subject, which I defer till I can 
better collect my own thoughts on it — at present they are 
confused and struggling. The great Maestro has been most 
gracious. 

In what a radiant atmosphere his genius lives and breathes ! 
Even in his cynical moods, his very cynicism has in it the 
ring of a jocund music — the laugh of Figaro, not of Mephis- 
topheles. 

We went to dine with him last week : he invited to meet 
us Madame S , who has this year conquered all opposi- 
tion, and reigns alone, the great S ; Mr T , a pianist 

of admirable promise; your friend M. Savarin, wit, critic, 
and poet, with his pleasant sensible wife, and a few others, 
who, the Maestro confided to me in a whisper, were authori- 
ties in the press. After dinner S sang to us, magnifi- 

cently, of course. Then she herself graciously turned to me, 
said how much she had heard from the Maestro in my praise, 
and so-and-so. I was persuaded to sing after her. I need 
not say to what disadvantage. But I forgot my nervousness ; 


C8 


THE PARISIANS. 


I forgot my audience ; I forgot myself, as I always do when 
once my soul, as it were, finds wing in music, and buoys itself 
in air, relieved from the sense of earth. I knew not that 1 
had succeeded till I came to a close ; and then, my eyes rest- 
ing on the face of the grand prima donna^ I was seized with 
an indescribable sadness — with a keen pang of remorse. 
Perfect artiste though she be, and with powers in her own 
realm of art which admit of no living equal, I saw at once 
that I had pained her ; she had grown almost livid ; her lips 
were quivering, and it was only with a great efibrt that she 
muttered out some faint words intended for applause. I com- 
prehended by an instinct how gradually there can grow upon 
the mind of an artist the most generous that jealousy which 
makes the fear of a rival annihilate the delight in art. If 

ever I should achieve S ’s fame as a singer, should I feel 

the same jealousy? I think not now, but I have not been 
tested. She went away abruptly. I spare you the recital of 
the compliments paid to me by my other auditors, compli- 
ments that gave me no pleasure ; for on all lips, except those 
of the Maestro^ they implied, as the height of eulogy, that I 

had inflicted torturd upon S . “ If so,” said he, “ she 

would be as foolish as a rose that was jealous of the white- 
ness of a lily. You would do yourself great wrong, my 
child, if you tried to vie with the rose in its own color.” 

He patted my bended head as he spoke, with that kind of 
fatherly king-like fondness with which he honors me ; and I 
took his hand in mine, and kissed it gratefully. “ Neverthe- 
less,” said Savarin, “ when the lily comes out there will be a 
furious attack on it, made by the clique that devotes itself to 


THE PARISIANS. 


6y 

the rose : a lily clique will be formed en revanche^ and I fore- 
see a fierce paper war. Do not be frightened at its first out- 
burst ; every fame worth having must be fought for.” 

Is it so ? have you had to fight for your fame, Eulalie ? and 
do you hate all contest as much as I do ? 

Our only other gayety since I last wrote was a soiree at M. 
Louvier’s. That republican millionaire was not slow in attend- 
ing to the kind letter you addressed to him recommending us 
to his civilities. He called at once, placed his good offices at 
our disposal, took charge of my modest fortune, which he has 
invested, no doubt, as safely as it is advantageously in point 
of interest, hired our carriage for us, and in short has been 
most amiably useful. 

At his house we met many to me most pleasant, for they 
spoke with such genuine appreciation of your works and your- 
self. But there were others whom I should never have 
expected to meet under the roof of a Croesus who has so 
great a stake in the order of things established. One young 
man — a noble whom he specially presented to me, as a poli- 
tician who would be at the head of affairs when the Bed 
Bepublic was established — asked me whether I did not agree 
with him that all private property was public spoliation, and 
that the great enemy to civilization was religion, no matter in 
what form. 

He addressed to me these tremendous questions with an 
effeminate lisp, and harangued on them with small feeble ges- 
ticulations of pale dainty fingers covered with rings. 

I asked him if there were many in France who shared his 
ideas. 


70 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Quite enough to carry them some day,” he answered, 
with a lofty smile. “ And the day may be nearer than the 
world thinks, when my confrhxes will be so numerous that 
they will have to shoot down each other for the sake of cheese 
to their bread.” 

That day nearer than the world thinks ! Certainly, so far 
as one may judge the outward signs of the world at Paris, it 
does not think of such things at all. With what an air of 
self-content the beautiful city parades her riches ! Who can 
gaze on her splendid palaces, her gorgeous shops, and believe 
that she will give ear to doctrines that would annihilate pri- 
vate rights of property? or who can enter her crowded 
churches, and dream that she can ever again install a republic 
too civilized for religion? 

Adieu. Excuse me for this dull letter. If I have written 
on much t' at has little interest even for me, it is that I wish 
to distract my mind from brooding over the question that in- 
terests me most, and on which I most need your counsel. I 
will try to approach it in my next. 

ISAURA. 

From the Same to the Same. 

Eulalie, Eulalie ! — what mocking spkit has been permitted 
in this modern age of ours to place in the heart of woman the am- 
bition which is the prerogative of men ? — You indeed, so richly 
endowed with a man’s genius,, have a right to man’s aspirations. 
But what can justify such ambition in me ? Nothing but this 
one unintellectual perishable gift of a voice that does but please 
in uttering the thoughts of others. Doubtless I could make a 


THE PARISIANS. 


71 


name familiar for its brief time to the talk of Europe— a 
name, what name ? a singer’s name. Once I thought that 
name a glory. Shall I ever forget the day when you first 
shone upon me ; when, emerging from childhood as from a 
dim and solitary by-path, I stood forlorn on the great thorough- 
fare of life, and all the prospects before me stretched sad in 
mists and in rain ? You beamed on me then as the sun com- 
ing out from the cloud and changing the face of earth ; you 
opened to my sight the fairy-land of poetry and art ; you took 
me by the hand and said, “ Courage ! there is at each step 
some green gap in the hedge-rows, some soft escape from the 
stony thoroughfare. Beside the real life expands the ideal 
life to those who seek it. Droop not, seek it ; the ideal life 
has its sorrows, but it never admits despair ; as on the ear of 
him who follows the winding course of a stream, the stream 
ever varies the note of its music, now loud with the rush of 
the falls, now low and calm as it glides by the level marge of 
smooth banks ; now sighing through the stir of the reeds, 
now babbling with a fretful joy as some sudden curve on the 
shore stays its flight among gleaming pebbles : — so to the soul 
of the artist is the voice of the art ever fleeting beside and 
before him. Nature gave thee the bird’s gift of song — raise 
the gift into art and make the art thy companion. 

“ Art and Hope were twin-born, and they die together.” 

See how faithfully I remember, methinks, your very words. 
But the magic of the words, which 1 then but dimly under- 
stood, was in your smile and in your eye, and the queen-like 
wave of your hand as if beckoning to a world which lay before 
you, visible and familiar as your native land. And how de- 


72 


THE PARISIANS. 


votedly, with what earnestness of passion, I gave myself up 
to the task of raising my gift into an art ! I thought of 
nothing else, dreamed of nothing else ; and oh, how sweet to 
me then were words of praise! “Another year yet,” at 
length said the masters, “ and you ascend your throne among 
the queens of song.” Then — then — I would have changed 
for no other throne on earth my hope of that to be achieved 
in the realms of my art. And then came that long fever : 
my strength broke down, and the Maestro said, “ Rest, or 
your voice is gone, and your throne is lost forever.” How 
hateful that rest seemed to me 1 You again came to my aid. 
You said, “ The time you thinlTlost should be but time im- 
proved. Penetrate your mind with other songs than the 
trash of Libretti. The more you habituate yourself to the 
forms, the more you imbue yourself with the spirit, in which 
passions have been expressed and character delineated by 
great writers, the more completely you will accomplish your- 
self in your own special art of singer and actress.” So, 
then, you allured me to a new study. Ah 1 in so doing did 
you dream that you diverted me from the old ambition ? My 
knowledge of French and Italian, and my rearing in child- 
hood, which had made English familiar to me, gave me the 
keys to the treasure-houses of three languages. Naturally I 
began with that in which your masterpieces are composed. 
Till then I had not even read your works. They were the 
first I chose. How they impressed, how they startled me 1 
what depths in the mind of man, in the heart of woman, they 
revealed to me 1 But I owned to you then, and I repeat it 
now, neither they nor any of the works in romance and 


THE PARISIANS. 


73 


poetry wliicli form the boast of recent French literature, 
satisfied yearnings for that calm sense of beauty, that divine 
joy in a world beyond this world, which you had led me to 
believe it was the prerogative of ideal art to bestow. And 
when I told you this with the rude frankness you had bid 
me exercise in talk with you, a thoughtful melancholy shade 
fell over your face, and you said quietly, “You are right, 
child ; we, the French of our time, are the ofispring of 
revolutions that settled nothing, unsettled all : we resemble 
those troubled States which rush into war abroad in order to 
re-establish peace at home. Our books suggest problems to 
men for reconstructing soifie social system in which the calm 
that belongs to art may be found at last: but such books 
should not be in your hands ; they are not for the innocence 
and youth of women, as yet unchanged by the systems which 
exist.” And the next day you brought me Tasso’s great 
poem, the Gerusalemme- Liherata^ and said smiling, “ Art in 
its calm is here.” 

You remember that I was then at Sorrento by the order of 
my physician. Never shall I forget the soft autumn day 
when I sat among the lonely rocklets to the left of the town 
— the sea before me, with scarce a ripple; my very heart 
steeped in the melodies of that poem, so marvelous for a 
strength disguised in sweetness, and for a symmetry in which 
each proportion blends into the other with the perfectness of 
a Grrecian statue. The whole place seemed to me filled with 
the presence of the poet to whom it had given birth. Cer- 
tainly the reading of that poem formed an era in my exist- 
ence ; to this day I cannot acknowledge the faults or weak- 
VOL. I. — D 


74 


THE PARISIANS. 


nesses which your criticisms pointed out — I believe because 
they are in unison with my own nature, which yearns for har- 
mony, and, finding that, rests contented. I shrink from vio- 
lent contrasts, and can discover nothing tame and insipid in a 
continuance of sweetness and serenity. But it was not till 
after I had read La Gerusalemine again and again, and then 
sat and brooded over it, that I recognized the main charm of 
the poem in the religion which clings to it as the perfume 
clings to a flower — a religion sometimes melancholy, but never 
to me sad. Hope always pervades it. Surely, if, as you said, 
“ Hope is twin-born with art,’ ’ it is because art at its highest 
blends itself unconsciously with religion, and proclaims its 
affinity with hope by its faith in some future good more per- 
fect than it has realized in the past. 

Be this as it may, it was in this poem so pre-eminently 
Christian that I found the something which I missed and 
craved for in modern French masterpieces, even yours — a 
something spiritual, speaking to my own soul, calling it forth ; 
distinguishing it as an essence apart from mere human rea- 
son ; soothing, even when it excited ; making earth nearer to 
heaven. And when I ran on in this strain to you after my 
own wild fashion, you took my head between your hands and 
kissed me, and said, “ Happy are those who believe ! long 
may that happiness be thine !” Why did I not feel in Dante 
the Christian charm that I felt in Tasso? Dante in your 
eyes, as in those of most judges, is infinitely the greater 
genius ; but reflected on the dark stream of that genius the 
stars are so troubled, the heavens so threatening. 

Just as my year of holiday was expiring, I turned to Eng- 


THE P A ll I S I A N S. 


75 


lisli literature ; and Shakspeare, of course, was the first Eng- 
lish poet put into my hands. It proves how childlike my 
mind still was, that my earliest sensation in reading him was 
that of disappointment. It was not only that, despite my 
familiarity with English (thanks chiefly to the care of him 
whom I call my second father), there is much in the meta- 
phorical diction of Shakspeare which I failed to comprehend ; 
but he seemed to me so far like the modern French writers 
who affect to have found inspiration in his muse, that he ob- 
trudes images of pain and suffering without cause or motive 
sufficiently clear to ordinary understandings, as I had taught 
myself to think it ought to be in the drama. 

He makes Fate so cruel that we lose sight of the mild deity 
behind her. Cj^ympare, in this, Corneille’s Polyeucte'' with 
the “Hamlet.” In the first an equal calamity befalls the 
good, but in their calamity they are blessed. The death of 
the martyr is the triumph of his creed. But when we have 
put down the English tragedy — when Hamlet and Ophelia 
are confounded in death with Polonius and the fratricidal 
king, we see not what good end for humanity is achieved. 
The passages that fasten on our memory do not make us hap- 
pier and holier ; they suggest but terrible problems, to which 
they give us no solution. 

In the “ Horaces'" of Corneille there are fierce contests, rude 
passions, tears drawn from some of the bitterest sources of 
human pity ; but then through all stands out, large and visi- 
ble to the eyes of all spectators, the great ideal of devoted 
patriotism. How much of all that has been grandest in the 
life of France, redeeming even its worst crimes of revolution 


76 


THE PARISIANS. 


in the love of country, has had its origin in the Horaces" of 
Corneille ! But I doubt if the fates of Coriolanus, and Cassar, 
and Brutus, and Antony, in the giant tragedies of Shakspeare 
have made Englishmen more willing to die for England. In 
fine, it was long before — I will not say I understood or rightly 
appreciated Shakspeare, for no Englishman would admit that 
I or even you could ever do so — ^but before I could recognize the 
justice of the place his country claims for him as the genius with- 
out an equal in the literature of Europe. Meanwhile the ardor 
I had put into study, and the wear and tear of the emotions 
which the study called forth, made themselves felt in a return of 
my former illness, with symptoms still more alarming ; and Avhen 
the year was out I was ordained to rest for perhaps another year 
before I could sing in public, still less appeijj: on the stage. 
How I rejoiced when I heard that fiat, for I emerged from that 
year of study with a heart utterly estranged from the profession 

in which I had centred my hopes before . Yes, Eulalie, 

you had bid me accomplish myself for the arts of utterance by 
the study of arts in which thoughts originate the words they 
employ, and in doing so — I had changed myself into another 
being. I was forbidden all fatigue of mind ; my books were 
banished, but not the new self which the books had formed. 
Recovering slowly through the summer, I came hither two 

months since, ostensibly for the advice of Hr. C , but 

really in the desire to commune with my own heart, and be 
still. 

And now I have poured forth that heart to you — would 
you persuade me still to be a singer ? If you do, remember 
at least how jealous and absorbing the art of the singer and 


THE PARISIANS. 


77 


of the actress is. How completely I must surrender myself 
to it, and live among books, or among dreams, no more. Can 
I be anything else but singer ? and if not, should I be con- 
tented merely to read and to dream ? 

I must confide to you one ambition which during the lazy 
Italian summer took possession of me — I must tell you the 
ambition, and add that I have renounced it as a vain one. I 
had hoped that I could compose, I mean in music. I was 
pleased with some things I did — they expressed in music 
what I could not express in words ; and one secret object in 
coming here was to submit them to the great Maestro, He 
listened to them patiently ; he complimented me upon my 
accuracy in the mechanical laws of composition ; he even said 
that my favorite airs were*- “ touchants et gracieux^ 

And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, 
and said, “ Tell me frankly, do you think that with time and 
study I could compose music such as singers equal to myself 
could sing to ?” 

You mean as a professional composer?” 

“ Well, yes.” 

“ And to the abandonment of your vocation as a singer ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I en- 
couraged such a notion ; cling to the career in which you can 
be greatest ; gain but health, and I wager my reputation on 
your glorious success on the stage. What can you be as a 
composer? You will set pretty music to pretty words, and 
will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or 
less that generally attends the compositions of female ama- 


78 


THE PARISIANS. 


tears. Aim at something higher, as I know you would do, 
and you will not succeed. Is there any instance in modern 
times, perhaps in any times, of a female composer who attains 
even to the eminence of a third-rate opera-writer? Composi- 
tion in letters may be of no sex ; in that Madame Dudevant 
and your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can beat most men ; 
but the genius of musical composition is homnie^ and accept 
• it as a compliment when I say that you are essentially feimiie''' 

He left me, of course, mortified and humbled ; but I feel 
he is right as regards myself, though whether in his deprecia- 
tion of our whole sex I cannot say. But as this hope has 
left me, I have become more disquieted, still more restless. 
Counsel me, Eulalie; counsel, and, if possible, comfort me. 

ISAURA. 

From the Same to the Same. 

No letter from you yet, and I have left you in peace for 
ten days. How do you think I have spent them? The 
Maestro called on us with M. Savarin, to insist on our accom- 
panying them on a round of the theatres. I had not been to 
one since my arrival. I divined that the kind-hearted com- 
poser had a motive in this invitation. He thought that in 
witnessing the applauses bestowed on actors, and sharing in 
the fascination in which theatrical illusion holds an audience, 
my old passion for the stage, and with it the longing for an 
artistes fame, would revive. 

In my heart I wished that his expectations might be real- 
ized. W ell for me if I could once more concentre all my 
aspirations on a prize within my reach ! 

We went first to see a comedy greatly in vogue, and the 


THE PARISIANS. 


79 


author thoroughly understands the French stage of our day. 
The acting was excellent in its way. The next night we went 
to the Odeon, a romantic melodrama in six acts, and I know 
not how many tableaux. I found no fault with the acting 
there. I do not give you the rest of our programme. We 
visited all the principal theatres, reserving the opera and 

Madame S for the last. Before I speak of the opera, 

let me say a word or two on the plays. 

There is no country in which the theatre has so great a 
hold on the public as in France ; no country in which the 
successful dramatist has so high a fame ; no country perhaps 
in which the state of the stage so faithfully represents the 
moral and intellectual condition of the people. I say this 
not, of course, from my experience of countries which I have 
not visited, but from all I hear of the stage in Germany and 
in England. 

The impression left on my mind by the performances I wit- 
nessed is, that the French people are becoming dwarfed. The 
comedies that please them are but pleasant caricatures of petty 
sections in a corrupt society. They contain no large types of 
human nature; their witticisms convey no luminous flashes 
of truth ; their sentiment is not pure and noble — it is a sickly 
and false perversion of the impure and ignoble into travesties 
of the pure and noble. 

Their melodramas cannot be classed as literature — all that 
really remains of the old French genius is its vaudeville. 

Great dramatists create great parts. One great part, such 
as a Bachel would gladly have accepted, I have not seen in 
the dramas of the young generation. 




80 


THE PARISIANS. 


High art has taken refuge in the opera ; but that is not 
French opera. I do not complain so much that French taste 
is less refined. I complain that French intellect is lowered. 
The descent from Polyeucte to Ruy Bias is great, not so much 
in the poetry of form as in the elevation of thought ; but the 
descent from Buy Bias to the best drama now produced is out 
of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give 
not even the glimpse of a mountain-top. 

But now to the opera. S in Norma 1 The house was 

crowded, and its enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine. You 

tell me that S never rivaled Pasta, but certainly her 

Norma is a great performance. Her voice has lost less of its 
freshness than I had been told, and what is lost of it her prac- 
ticed management conceals or carries oflf. 

The Maestro was quite right — I could never vie with her 
in her own line ; but conceited and vain as I may seem even 
to you in saying so, I feel in my own line that I could com- 
mand as large an applause — of course taking into account my 
brief-lived advantage of youth. Her acting, apart from her 
voice, does not please me. It seems to me to want intelli- 
gence of the subtler feelings, the under-current of emotion, 
which constitutes the chief beauty of the situation and the 
character. Am I jealous when I say this? Bead on and 
judge. 

On our return that night, when I had seen the Yenosta to 
bed, I went into my own room, opened the window, and looked 
out. A lovely night, mild as in spring at Florence — the 
moon at her full, and the stars looking so calm and so high 
beyond our reach of their tranquillity. The evergreens in 


T II E r A il 1 S I A N S. 


81 


the gardens of the villas around me silvered over, and the 
summer boughs, not yet clothed with leaves, were scarcely 
visible amid the changeless smile of the laurels. At the dis- 
tance lay Paris, only to be known by its innumerable lights. 
And then I said to myself — 

“No, I cannot be an actress ; I cannot resign my real self 
for that vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps. Out on those 
stage robes and painted cheeks I Out on that simulated utter- 
ance of sentiments, learned by rote and practiced before the 
looking-glass till every gesture has its drill.” 

Then I gazed on those stars which provoke our question- 
ings and return no answer, till my heart grew full, so full, 
and I bowed my head and wept like a child. 

From the Same to the Same. 

And still no letter from you ! I see in the journals that 
you have left Nice. Is it that you are too absorbed in your 
work to have leisure to write to me ? I know you are not 
ill ; for if you were, all Paris would know of it. All Europe 
has an interest in your health. Positively I will write to you 
no more till a word from yourself bids me do so. 

I fear I must give up my solitary walks in the Bois de 
Boulogne : they were very dear to me, partly because the 
quiet path to which I confined myself was that to which you 
directed me as the one you habitually selected when at Paris, 
and in which you had brooded over and revolved the loveliest 
of your romances ; and partly because it was there that, catch- 
ing, alas ! not inspiration but enthusiasm from the genius that 
had hallowed the place, and dreaming I might originate music, 

6 


82 


THE PARISIANS. 


I nursed my own aspirations and murmured my own airs. 
And though so close to that world of Paris to which all artists 
must appeal for judgment or audience, the spot was so undis- 
turbed, so sequestered. But of late that path has lost its 
solitude, and therefore its charm. 

Six days ago the first person I encountered in my walk was 
a man whom I did not then heed. He seemed in thought, 
or rather in reverie, like myself ; we passed each other twice 
or thrice, and I did not notice whether he was young or old, 
tall or short ; hut he came the next day, and a third day, and 
then I saw that he was young, and, in so regarding him, his 
eyes became fixed on mine. The fourth day he did not come, 
but two other men came, and the look of one was inquisitive 
and offensive. They sat themselves down on a bench in the 
walk, and, though I did not seem to notice them, I hastened 
home ; and the next day in talking with our kind Madame 
Savarin, and alluding to these quiet walks of mine, she 
hinted, with the delicacy which is her characteristic, that the 
customs of Paris did not allow demoiselles comnie il faut to 
walk alone even in the most sequestered paths of the Bois. 

I begin now to comprehend your disdain of customs which 
impose chains so idly galling on the liberty of our sex. 

We dined with the Savarins last evening; what a joyous 
nature he has! Not reading Latin, I only know Horace by 
translations, which I am told are bad ; but Savarin seems to 
me a sort of half Horace, — Horace on his town-bred side, so 
playfully well-bred, so good-humored in his philosophy, so 
affectionate to friends, and so biting to foes. But certainly 
Savarin could not have lived in a country farm upon endives 


THE PARISIANS. 


83 


and mallows. He is town-bred and Parisian, aw hout 
des angles. How he admires you, and how I love him for it ! 
Only in one thing he disappoints me there. It is your style 
that he chiefly praises ; certainly that style is matchless ; but 
style is only the clothing of thought, and to praise your style 
seems to me almost as invidious as the compliment to some 
perfect beauty, not on her form and face, but on her taste in 
dress. 

We met at dinner an American and his wife — a Colonel 
and Mrs. Morley : she is delicately handsome, as the American 
women I have seen generally are, and with that frank vivacity 
of manner which distinguishes them from Englishwomen. 
She seemed to take a fancy to me, and we soon grew very 
good friends. 

She is the flrst advocate I have met, except yourself, of that 
doctrine upon the Rights of Women — of which one reads 
more in the journals than one hears discussed in salons. 

Naturally enough I felt great interest in that subject, more 
especially since my rambles in the Bois were forbidden ; and 
as long as she declaimed on the hard fate of the women who, 
feeling within them powers that struggle for air and light be- 
yond the close precinct of household duties, find themselves 
restricted from fair rivalry with men in such fields of knowl- 
edge and toil and glory, as men since the world began have 
appropriated to themselves, I need not say that I went ^vith 
her cordially : you can ^ess that by my former letters. Bui 
when she entered into the detailed catalogue of our exact 
wrongs and our exact rights, I felt all the pusillanimity ol‘ 
my sex, and shrank back in terror. 


84 


THE PARISIANS. 


Her husband, joining us when she was in full tide of elo- 
quence, smiled at me with a kind of saturnine mirth. “ Made- 
moiselle, don’t believe a word' she says ; it is only tall talk ! 
In America the women are absolute tyrants, and it is I who, 
in concert with my oppressed countrymen, am going in for a 
platform agitation to restore the Rights of Men.” 

Upon this there was a lively battle of words between the 
spouses, in which, I must own, I thought the lady was de- 
cidedly worsted. 

No, Eulalie, I sec nothing in these schemes for altering 
our relations towards the other sex which would improve our 
condition. The inequalities we suffer are not imposed by law 
— not even by convention ; they are imposed by nature. 

Eulalie, you have had an experience unknown to me ; you 
have loved. In that day did you — ^you, round whom poets 
and sages and statesmen gather, listening to your words as to 
an oracle — did you feel that your pride of genius had gone 
out from you — that your ambition lived in him whom you 
loved — that his smile was more to you than the applause of a 
world ? 

I feel as if love in a woman must destroy her rights of 
equality — that it gives to her a sovereign even in one who 
would be inferior to herself if her love did not glorify and 
crown him. Ah ! if I could but merge this terrible egotism 
which oppresses me, into the being of some one who is what 
I would wish to be were I man ! I^ would not ask him to 
achieve fame. Enough if I felt that he was worthy of it, 
•and happier methinks to console him when he failed than to 
triumph with him when he won. Tell me, have you felt 


THE PARISIANS. 


85 


this ? When you loved did you stoop as to a slave, or did 
you bow down as to a master ? 

From Madame de Grantmesnil to Isaura Cicogna. 

Cli^re enfant ^ — All your four letters have reached me the 
same day. In one of my sudden whims I set off with a few 
friends on a rapid tour along the Kiviera to Genoa, thence to 
Turin on to Milan. Not knowing where we should rest even 
for a day, my letters were not forwarded. 

I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for all fatigues in 
having insured that accuracy in description of localities which 
my work necessitates. 

You are, my poor child, in that revolutionary crisis through 
which genius passes in youth before it knows its own self, and 
longs vaguely to do or to be a something other than it has 
done or has been before. For, not to be unjust to your own 
powers, genius you have — that inborn undefinable essence, in- 
cluding talent, and yet distinct from it. Genius you have, 
but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined. I see, though you 
are too diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the 
fame of singer, because, fevered by your reading, you would 
fain aspire to the thorny crown of author. I echo the hard 
saying of the Maestro^ I should be your worst enemy did I 
encourage you to forsake a career in which a dazzling success 
is so assured, for one in which, if it were your true vocation, 
you would not ask whether you were fit for it ; you would be 
impelled to it by the terrible star which presides over the birth 
of poets. 

Have you, who are so naturally observant, and of late have 


86 


THE PARISIANS. 


become so reflective, never remarked that authors, however 
absorbed in their own craft, do not wish their children to 
adopt it? The most successful author is perhaps the last 
person to whom neophytes should come for encouragement. 
This I think is not the case with the cultivators of the sister 
arts. The painter, the sculptor, the musician, seem disposed 
to invite disciples and welcome acolytes. As for those engaged 
in the practical affairs of life, fathers mostly wish their sons 
to be as they have been. 

The politician, the lawyer, the merchant, each says to his 
children, “Follow my steps.” All parents in practical life 
would at least agree in this — they would not wish their sons 
to be poets. There must be some sound cause in the world’s 
philosophy for this general concurrence of digression from a 
road of which the travelers themselves say to those whom 
they love best, “ Beware !” 

Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, the happiest 
nutriment of wisdom in after-years ; but I would never invite 
any one to look, upon the romance of youth as a thing 

“ To case in periods and embalm in ink.” 

Enfant, have you need of a publisher to create romance ? 
Is it not in yourself? Do not imagine that genius requires 
for its enjoyment the scratch of the pen and the types of the 
printer. Do not suppose that the poet, the romancier, is 
most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving, struggling, 
laboring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize the 
images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses 
of flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can 


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87 


bestow on tbem is to say that they are lifelike ? No : the 
poet’s real delight is not in the mechanism of composing ; the 
best part of that delight is in the sympathies he has estab- 
lished with innumerable modifications of life and form, and 
art and nature — sympathies which are often found equally 
keen in those who have not the same gift of language. The 
poet is but the interpreter. What of? — Truths in the hearts 
of others. He utters' what they feel. Is the joy in the utter- 
ance ? Nay, it is in the feeling itself. So, my dear, dark- 
bright child of song, when I bade thee open, out of the 
beaten thoroughfare, paths into the meads and river-banks at 
either side of the formal hedgerows, rightly dost thou add 
that I enjoined thee to make thine art thy companion. In 
the culture of that art for which you are so eminently gifted, 
you will find the ideal life ever beside the real. Are you not 
ashamed to tell me that in that art you do but utter the 
thoughts of others? You utter them in music ; through the 
music you not only give to the thoughts a new character, 
but you make them reproductive of fresh thoughts in your 
audience. 

You said very truly that you found in composing you could 
put into music thoughts which you could not put into words. 
That is the peculiar distinction of music. No ge mine musi- 
cian can explain in words exactly what he means to convey 
in his music. 

How little a libretto interprets an opera — how little we care 
even to read it ! It is the music that speaks to us ; and how ? 
— Through the human voice. We do not notice how poor 
are the words which the voice warbles. It is the voice itself 


88 


THE 1» A U 1 8 1 A x\ S. 


interpreting the soul of the musician which enchants and en> 
thralls us. And you who have that voice pretend to despise 
the gift. What ! despise the power of communicating de- 
light ! — the power that we authors envy ; and rarely, if ever, 
can we give delight with so little alloy as the singer. 

And when an audience disperses, can you guess what griefs 
the singer may have comforted ? what hard hearts he may 
have softened ? what high thoughts he may have awakened ? 

You say, “ Out on the vamped-up hypocrite ! Out on the 
stage-robes and painted cheeks !” 

I say, “ Out on the morbid spirit which so cynically re- 
gards the mere details by which a whole effect on the minds 
and hearts and souls of races and nations can be produced!” 

There, have I scolded you sufficiently? I should scold 
you more, if I did not see in the affluence of your youth and 
your intellect the cause of your restlessness. 

Riches are always restless. It is only to poverty that the 
gods give content. 

You question me about love : you ask if I have ever bowed 
to a master, ever merged my life in another’s : expect no an- 
swer on this from me. Circe herself could give no answer to 
the simplest maid, who, never having loved, asks, “ What is 
love?*’ 

In the history of the passions each human heart is a world 
in itself ; its experience profits no others. In no two lives 
does love play the same part or bequeath the same record. 

I know not whether I am glad or sorry that the word 
“love” now falls on my ear with a sound as slight and as 
faint as the dropping of a leaf in autumn may fall on thine. 


THE PARISIANS. 


89 


I volunteer but tbis lesson, the wisest I can give, if thou 
canst understand it : as I bade thee take art into thy life, so 
learn to look on life itself as an art. Thou couldst discover 
the charm in Tasso ; thou couldst perceive that the requisite 
of all art, that which pleases, is in the harmony of proportion. 
We lose sight of beauty if we exaggerate the feature most 
beautiful. 

Love proportioned adorns the homeliest existence; love 
disproportioned deforms the fairest. 

Alas ! wilt thou remember this warning when the time 
comes in which it may be needed ? 


E G . 


SOOTC IX. 


CHAPTER L 

It is several weeks after the date of the last chapter ; the 
lime-trees in the Tuileries are clothed in green. 

In a somewhat spacious apartment on the ground-floor in 
the quiet locality of the Rue d’ Anjou, a man was seated, very 
still, and evidently absorbed in deep thought, before a writing- 
table placed close to the window. 

Seen thus, there was an expression of great power both of 
intellect and of character in a face which, in ordinary social 
commune, might rather be noticeable for an aspect of hardy 
frankness, suiting well with the clear-cut, handsome profile, 
and the rich dark auburn hair, waving carelessly over one of 
those broad open foreheads, which, according to an old writer, 
seem the “ frontispiece of a temple dedicated to Honor.” 

The forehead, indeed, was the man’s most remarkable feature. 
It could not but prepossess the beholder. When, in private 
theatricals, he had need to alter the character of his counte- 
nance, he did it eflectually merely by forcing down his hair 
till it reached his eyebrows. He no longer then looked like 
the same man. 

The person I describe has been already introduced to the 
reader as Graham Vane. But perhaps this is the fit occasion 
to enter into some such details as to his parentage and position 
90 


THE PARISIANS. 


91 


as may make the introduction more satisfactory and com- 
plete. 

His father, the representative of a very ancient family, 
came into possession, after a long minority, of what may be 
called a fair squire’s estate, and about half a million in mon- 
eyed investments, inherited on the female side. Both land 
and money were absolutely at his disposal, unincumbered by 
entail or settlement. He was a man of a brilliant, irregular 
genius, of princely generosity, of splendid taste, of a gorgeous 
kind of pride closely allied to a masculine kind of vanity. 
As soon as he was of age he began to build, converting his 
squire’s hall into a ducal palace. He then stood for the 
county ; and in days before the first Reform Bill, when a 
county election was to the estate of a candidate what a long 
war is to the debt of a nation. He won the election ; he ob- 
tained early successes in - Parliament. It was said by good 
authorities in political circles that, if he chose, he might 
aspire to lead his party, and ultimately to hold the first rank 
in the government of his country. 

That may or may not be true ; but certainly he did not 
choose to take the trouble necessary for such an ambition. 
He was too fond of pleasure, of luxury, of pomp. He kept 
a famous stud of racers and hunters. He was a munificent 
patron of art. His establishments, his entertainments, were 
on a par with those of the great noble who represented the 
loftiest (Mr. Vane would not own it to be the eldest) branch 
of his genealogical tree. 

He became indifferent to political contests, indolent in his 
attendance at the House, speaking seldom, not at great length 


92 


THE PARISIANS. 


nor with much preparation, but with power and fire, origi- 
nality and genius ; so that he was not only efiective as an 
orator, but, combining with eloquence advantages of birth, 
person, station, the reputation of patriotic independence, and 
genial attributes of character, he was an authority of weight 
in the scales of party. 

This gentleman, at the age of forty, married the dowerless 
daughter of a poor but distinguished naval officer, of a noble 
family, first cousin to the Duke of Alton. 

He settled on her a suitable jointure, but declined to tie 
up any portion of his property for the benefit of children by 
the marriage. He declared that so much of his fortune was 
invested either in mines, the produce of which was extremely 
fluctuating, or in various funds, over rapid transfers in which 
it was his amusement and his interest to have control, un- 
checked by reference to trustees, that entails and settlements 
on children were an inconvenience he declined to incur. 

Besides, he held notions of his own as to the wisdom of 
keeping children dependent on their father. “ What numbers 
of young men,” said he, “ are ruined in character and in for- 
tune by knowing that when their father dies they are certain 
of the same provision, no matter how they displease him ; and 
in the mean while forestalling that provision by recourse to 
usurers.” These arguments might not have prevailed over 
the bride’s father a year or two later, when, by the death of 
intervening kinsmen, he became the Duke of Alton ; but in 
his then circumstances the marriage itself was so much beyond 
the expectations which the portionless daughter of a sea-cap- 
tain has the right to form, that Mr. Vane had it all his own 


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93 


way, and he remained absolute master of his whole fortune, 
save of that part of his landed estate on which his wife’s 
jointure was settled ; and even from this incumbrance he was 
very soon freed. His wife died in the second year of mar- 
riage, leaving an only son — Graham. lie grieved for her 
loss with all the passion of an impressionable, ardent, and 
powerful nature. Then for a while he sought distraction to 
his sorrow by throwing himself into public life with a devoted 
energy he had not previously displayed. 

His speeches served to bring his party into power, and he 
yielded, though reluctantly, to the unanimous demand of that 
party that he should accept one of the highest offices in 
the new Cabinet. He acquitted himself well as an admin- 
istrator, but declared, no doubt honestly, that he felt like 
Sinbad released from the old man on his back, when, a year 
or two afterwards, he went out of office with his party. No 
persuasions could induce him to come in again ; nor did he 
ever again take a very active part in debate. “ No,” said he, 
“ I was born to the freedom of a private gentleman — intoler- 
able to me is the thraldom of a public servant. But I will 
bring up my son so that he may acquit the debt which I 
decline to pay to my country.” There he kept his word. 
Graham had been carefully educated for public life, the am- 
bition for it dinned into his ear from childhood. In his 
school-vacations his father made him learn and declaim chosen 
specimens of masculine oratory ; engaged an eminent actor to 
give him lessons in elocution ; bade him frequent theatres, 
and study there the effect which words derive from looks and 
gesture ; encouraged him to take part himself in private the- 


94 


THE PARISIANS. 


atricals. To all this the hoy lent his mind with delight. He 
had the orator’s inborn temperament ; quick, yet imaginative, 
and loving the- sport of rivalry and contest. Being also, in 
his boyish years, good-humored and joyous, he was not more 
a favorite with the masters in the school-room than with the 
boys in the playground. Leaving Eton at seventeen, he 
then entered at Cambridge, and became, in his first term, the 
most popular speaker at the Union. 

But his father cut short his academical career, and decided, 
for reasons of his own, to place him at once in diplomacy. 
He was attached to the Embassy at Paris, and partook of the 
pleasures and dissipations of that metropolis too keenly to re- 
taiq much of the sterner ambition to which he had before 
devoted himself. Becoming one of the spoiled darlings of 
fashion, there was great danger that his character would relax 
into the easy grace of the Epicurean, when all such loiterings 
in the B,ose G-arden were brought to an abrupt close by a 
rude and terrible change in his fortunes. 

His father was killed by a fall from his horse in hunting ; 
and when his affairs were investigated they were found to be 
hopelessly involved — apparently the assets would not suffice 
for the debts. The elder Vane himself was probably not 
aware of the extent of his liabilities. He had never wanted 
ready money to the last. He could always obtain that from 
a money-lender, or from the sale of his funded investments. 
But it became obvious, on examining his papers, that he 
knew at least how impaired would be the heritage he should 
bequeath to a son whom he idolized. For that reason he 
had given Graham a profession in diplomacy, and for that 


THE PARISIANS. 


95 


reason he had privately applied to the Ministry for the Vice- 
royalty of India in the event of its speedy vacancy. He 
was eminent enough not to anticipate refusal, and with econ- 
omy in that lucrative post much of his pecuniary difficulties 
might have been redeemed, and at least an independent pro- 
vision secured for his son. 

Graham, like Alain de Rochebriant, allowed no reproach 
on his father’s memory — indeed, with more reason than 
Alain, for the elder Vane’s fortune had at least gone on no 
mean and frivolous dissipation. 

It had lavished itself on encouragement to art — on great 
objects of public beneficence — on public-spirited aid of politi- 
cal objects ; and even in mere selfish enjoyments there was a 
certain grandeur in his princely hospitalities, in his munifi- 
cent generosity, in his warm-hearted carelessness for money. 
No indulgence in petty follies or degrading vices aggravated 
the offense of the magnificent squanderer. 

“ Lei me look on my loss of fortune as a gain to myself,” 
said Graham, manfully. “ Had I been a rich man, my expe- 
rience of Paris tells me that I should most likely have been 
a very idle one. Now that I have no gold, I must dig in 
myself for iron.” 

The man to whom he said this was an uncle-in-law — if I 
may use that phrase — the Right Hon. Richard King, popu- 
larly styled “ the blameless King.” 

This gentleman had married the sister of Graham’s mother, 
whose loss in his infancy and boyhood she had tenderly and 
anxiously sought to supply. It is impossible to conceive a 
woman more fitted to invite love and reverence than was Lady 


96 


THE PARISIANS. 


Janet King, her manners were so sweet and gentle, her whole 
nature so elevated and pure. 

Her father had succeeded to the dukedom when she mar- 
ried Mr. King, and the alliance was not deemed quite suita- 
ble. Still it was not one to which the Duke would have been 
fairly justified in refusing his assent. 

Mr. King could not, indeed, boast of noble ancestry, nor 
was he even a landed proprietor ; but he was a not undis- 
tinguished member of Parliament, of irreproachable charac- 
ter, and ample fortune inherited from a distant kinsman, who 
had enriched himself as a merchant. It was on both sides a 
marriage of love. 

It is popularly said that a man uplifts a wife to his own 
rank ; it as often happens that a woman uplifts her husband 
to the dignity of her own character. Kichard King rose 
greatly in public estimation after his marriage with Lady 
Janet. 

She united to a sincere piety a very active and a very en- 
lightened benevolence. She guided his ambition aside from 
mere party politics into subjects of social and religious inter- 
est. and in devoting himself to these he achieved a position 
more popular and more respected than he could ever have won 
in the strife of party. 

When the Grovernment of which the elder Yane became a 
leading Minister was formed, it was considered a great object 
to secure a name so high in the religious world, so beloved by 
the working classes, as that of Richard King ; and he ac- 
cepted one of those places which, though not in the Cabinet, 
confers the rank of Privy Councillor. 


THE PARISIANS. 


97 


When that brief-lived Administration ceased, he felt the 
same sensation of relief that Vane had felt, and came to the 
same resolution never again to accept office, but from differ- 
ent reasons, all of which need not now be detailed. Among 
them, however, certainly this : — He was exceedingly sensitive 
to opinion, thin-skinned as to abuse, and very tenacious of the 
respect due to his peculiar character of sanctity and philan- 
thropy. He writhed under every newspaper article that made 
“ the blameless King” responsible for the iniquities of the 
Government to which he belonged. In the loss of office he 
seemed to recover his former throne. 

Mr. King heard Graham’s resolution with a grave approv- 
ing smile, and his interest in the young man became greatly 
increased. He devoted himself strenuously to the object of 
saving to Graham some wrecks of his paternal fortunes, and, 
having a clear head and great experience in the transaction 
of business, he succeeded beyond the most sanguine expecta- 
tions formed by the family solicitor. A rich manufacturer 
was found to purchase at a fancy price the bulk of the estate 
with the palatial mansion, which the estate alone could never 
have sufficed to maintain with suitable establishments. 

So that when all debts were paid, Graham found himself in 
possession of a clear income of about £500 a year, invested 
in a mortgage secured on a part of the hereditary lands, on 
which was seated an old hunting-lodge bought by a brewer. 

With this portion of the property Graham parted very re- 
luctantly. It was situated amid the most picturesque scenery 
on the estate, and the lodge itself was a remnant of the ori- 
ginal residence of his ancestors before it had been abandoned 
VoL. I. — E 7 




98 


THE PARISIANS. 


for that which, built in the reign of Elizabeth, had been ex- 
panded into a Trentham-like palace by the last owner. 

But Mr. King’s argument reconciled him to the sacrifice. 
“ I can manage,” said the prudent adviser, “if you insist on 
it, to retain that remnant of the hereditary estate which you 
are so loath to part with. But how ? by mortgaging it to an 
extent that will scarcely leave you £50 a year net from the 
rents. This is not all. Your mind will then be distracted 
from the large object of a career to the small object of retain- 
ing a few family acres ; you will be constantly hampered by 
private anxieties and fears : you could do nothing for the 
benefit of those around you — could not repair a farm-house for 
a better class of tenant — could not rebuild a laborer’s dilapi- 
dated cottage. Give up an idea that might be very well for 
a man whose sole ambition was to remain a squire, however 
beggarly. Launch yourself into the larger world of metro- 
politan life with energies wholly unshackled, a mind wholly 
undisturbed, and secure of an income which, however modest, 
is equal to that of most young men who enter that world as 
your equals.” 

Graham was convinced, and yielded, though with a bitter 
pang. It is hard for a man whose fathers have lived on the 
soil to give up all trace of their whereabouts. But none saw 
in him any morbid consciousness of change of fortune, when, 
a year after his father’s death, he reassumed his place in 
society. If before courted for his expectations, he was still 
courted for himself ; by many of the great who had loved hw 
father, perhaps even courted more. 

He resigned the diplomatic caieer, not merely because tlie 


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99 


rise in that profession is slow, and in the intermediate steps 
the chances of distinction are slight and few, but more because 
he desired to cast his lot in the home country, and regarded 
the courts of other lands as exile. 

It was not true, however, as Lemercier had stated on re- 
port, that he lived on his pen. Curbing all his old extrava- 
gant tastes, £500 a year amply supplied his wants. But he 
had by his pen gained distinction, and created great belief in 
his abilities for a public career. He had written critical arti- 
cles, read with much praise, in periodicals of authority, and 
had published one or two essays on political questions, which 
had created yet more sensation. It was only the graver liter- 
ature, connected more or less with his ultimate object of a 
public career, in which he had thus evinced his talents of 
composition. Such writings were not of a nature to bring 
him much money, but they gave him a definite and solid 
station. In the old time, before the first Reform Bill, his 
reputation would have secured him at once a seat in Parlia- 
ment ; but the ancient nurseries of statesmen are gone, and 
their place is not supplied. 

He had been invited, however, to stand for more than one " 
large and populous borough, with very fair prospects of suc- 
cess ; and whatever the expense, Mr. King had ofiered to de- 
fray it. But Graham would not have incurred the latter 
obligation ; and when he learned the pledges which his sup- 
porters would have exacted, . he would not have stood if success 
had been certain and the cost nothing. I cannot,” he said 
to his friends, “ go into the consideration of what is best for 
the country with my thoughts manacled ; and I cannot be 


100 


THE PARISIANS. 


both representative and slave of the greatest ignorance of the 
greatest number. I bide my time, and meanwhile I prefer 
to write as I please, rather than vote as I don’t please.” 

Three years went by, passed chiefly in England, partly in 
travel ; and at the age of thirty Graham Vane was still one 
of those of whom admirers say, “ He will be a great man some 
day,” and detractors reply, “ Some day seems a long way olf.” 

The same fastidiousness which had operated against that 
entrance into Parliament to which his ambition not the less 
steadily adapted itself, had kept him free from the perils of 
wedlock. In his heart he yearned for love and domestic life, 
but he had hitherto met with no one who realized the ideal 
he had formed. With his person, his accomplishments, his 
connections, and his repute, he might have made many an ad- 
vantageous marriage. But somehow or other the charm van- 
ished from a fair face if the shadow of a money-bag fell on 
it ; on the other hand, his ambition occupied so large a share 
in his thoughts that he would have fled in time from the 
temptation of a marriage that would have overweighted him 
beyond the chance of rising. Added to all, he desired in a 
wife an intellect that, if not equal to his own, could become 
so by sympathy — a union of high culture and noble aspira- 
tion, and yet of loving womanly sweetness which a man 
seldom finds out of books ; and when he does find it, perhaps 
it does not wear the sort of face that he fancies. Be that as 
it may, Graham was still unmarried and heart-whole. 

And now a new change in his life befell him. Lady Janet 
died of a fever conti-acted in her habitual rounds of charity 
among the houses of the poor. She had been to him as the 


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101 


most tender mother, and a lovelier soul than hers never 
alighted on the earth. His grief was intense ; but what was 
her husband’s ? — one of those griefs that kill. 

To the side of Richard King his Janet had been as the 
guardian angel. His love for her was almost worship : with 
her, every object in a life hitherto so active and useful seemed 
gone. He evinced no noisy passion of sorrow. He shut 
himself up, and refused to see even Graham. But after some 
weeks had passed, he admitted the clergyman in whom, on 
spiritual matters, he habitually confided, and seemed consoled 
by the visits ; then he sent for his lawyer, and made his will ; 
after which he allowed Graham to call on him daily, on the 
condition that there should be no reference to his loss. He 
spoke to the young man on other subjects, rather drawing him 
out about himself, sounding his opinion on various grave 
matters, watching his face while he questioned, as if seeking 
to dive into his heart, and sometimes pathetically sinking into 
silence, broken but by sighs. So it went on for a few more 
weeks; then he took the advice of his physician to seek 
change of air and scene. He went away alone, without even 
a servant, not leaving word where he had gone. After a 
little while he returned, more ailing, more broken than before. 
One morning he was found insensible — ^stricken by paralysis. 
He regained consciousness, and even for some days rallied 
strength. He might have recovered, but he seemed as if he 
tacitly refused to live. He expired at last, peacefully, in 
Graham’s arms. 

At the opening of his will, it was found that he had left 
Graham his sole heir and executor. Deducting Government 


102 


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duties, legacies to servants, and donations to public charities, 
the sum thus bequeathed to his lost wife’s nephew was two 
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. 

With such a fortune, opening indeed was made for an am- 
bition so long obstructed. But Graham affected no change 
in his mode of life : he still retained his modest bachelor’s 
apartments — engaged no servants — bought no horses — in no 
way exceeded the income he had possessed before. He 
seemed, indeed, depressed rather than elated by the succession 
to a wealth which he had never anticipated. 

Two children had been born from the marriage of Richard 
King ; they had died young, it is true, but Lady Janet at the 
time of her own decease was not too advanced in years for 
the reasonable expectation of other offspring ; and even after 
Richard King became a widower he had given to Graham no 
hint of his testamentary dispositions. The young man was 
no blood-relation to him, and naturally supposed that such 
relations would become the heirs. But in truth the deceased 
seemed to have no near relations : none had ever been known to 
visit him — none raised a voice to question the justice of his will. 

Lady Janet had been buried at Kensal Green ; her hus- 
band’s remains were placed in the same vault. 

For days add days Graham went his way lonelily to the 
cemetery. He might be seen standing motionless by that 
tomb, with tears rolling down his cheeks ; yet his was not a 
weak nature — not one of those that love indulgence of irre- 
mediable grief. On the contrary, people who did not know 
him well said that “ he had more head than heart,” and the 
character of his pursuits, as of his writings, was certainly not 


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103 


that of a sentimentalist. He had not thus visited the tomb 
till Richard King had been placed within it. Yet his love 
for his aunt was unspeakably greater than that which he 
could have felt for her husband. Was it, then, the husband 
that he so much more acutely mourned ? or was there some- 
thing that, since the husband’s death, had deepened his rever- 
ence for the memory of her whom he had not only loved as a 
mother, but honored as a saint ? 

These visits to the cemetery did not cease till Graham was 
confined to his bed by a very grave illness — the only one he 
had ever known. His physician said it was nervous fever, 
and occasioned by moral shock or excitement ; it was attended 
with delirium. His recovery was slow, and when it was suffi- 
ciently completed he quitted England ; and we find him now, 
with his mind composed, his strength restored, and his spirits 
braced, in that gay city of Paris, hiding, perhaps, some earnest 
purpose amidst his participation in its holiday enjoyments. 

He is now, as I have said, seated before'his writing-table 
in deep thought. He takes up a letter which he had already 
glanced over hastily, and reperuses it with more care. 

The letter is from his cousin, the Duke of Alton, who had 
succeeded a few years since to the family honors — an able 
man, with no small degree of information, an ardent politician, 
but of very rational and temperate opinions ; too much occu- 
pied by the cares of a princely estate to covet office for him- 
self ; too sincere a patrio. not to desire office for those to whose 
hands he thought the country might be most safely intrusted 
— an intimate friend of Graham’s. The contents of the letter 
are these : — 


104 


THE PARISIANS. 


My dear Graham, — I trust that you will welcome the 
brilliant opening into public life which these lines are intended 
to announce to you. Vavasour has just been with me to say 
that he intends to resign his seat for the county when Parlia- 
ment meets, and agreeing with me that there is no one so fit 
to succeed him as yourself, he suggests the keeping his inten- 
tion secret until you have arranged your committee and are 
prepared to take the field. You cannot hope to escape a con- 
test ; but I have examined the Register, and the party has 
gained rather than lost since the last election, when Vavasour 
was so triumphantly returned. 

The expenses for this county, where there are so many 
out- voters to bring up, and so many agents to retain, are 
always large in comparison with some other counties; but 
that consideration is all in your favor, for it deters Squire 
Hunston, the only man who could beat you, from starting ; 
and to your resources a thousand pounds more or less are a 
trifle not worth discussing. You know how difficult it is 
nowadays to find a seat for a man of moderate opinions like 
yours and mine. Our county would exactly suit you. The 
constituency is so evenly divided between the urban and rural 
populations, that its representative must fairly consult the 
interests of both. He can be neither an ultra-Tory nor a 
violent Radical. He is left to the enviable freedom, to which 
you say you aspire, of considering what is best for the country 
as a whole. 

Do not lose so rare an apportunity. There is but one 
drawback to your triumphant candidature. It will be said 
that you have no longer an acre in the county in which the 
Vanes have been settled so long. That drawback can be re- 
moved. It is true that you can never hope to buy back the 
estates which you were compelled to sell at your father's 
death — the old manufacturer gripes them too firmly to loosen 
his hold ; and, after all, even were your income double what 


THE PARISIANS. 


105 


it is, you would be overhoused in the vast pile in which youi 
father buried so large a share of his fortune. But that beau- 
tiful old hunting-lodge, the Stamm Schloss of your family, 
with the adjacent farms, can be now repurchased very reason- 
ably. The brewer who bought them is afflicted with an ex- 
travagant son, whom he placed in the Hussars, and will 

gladly sell the property for £5000 more than he gave : well 
worth the difference, as he has improved the farm-buildings 
and raised the rental. I think, in addition to the sum you 
have , on mortgage, £23,000 will be accepted, and as a mere 
investment pay you nearly three per cent. But to you it is 
worth more than double the money ; it once more identifies 
your ancient name with the county. You would be a greater 
personage with that moderate holding in the district in which 
your race took root, and on which your father’s genius threw 
such a lustre, than you would be if you invested all your 
wealth in a county in which every squire and farmer would 
call you “ the new man.” Pray think over this most seriously, 
and instruct your solicitor to open negotiations with the brewer 
at once. But rather put yourself into the train, and come 
back to England straight to me. I will ask Vavasour to meet 
you. What news from Paris ? Is the Emperor as ill as the 
papers insinuate? And is the revolutionary party gaining 
ground ? 

Your affectionate cousin, 

Alton. 

As he put down this letter, Graham heaved a short im- 
patient sigh. 

“ The old Stamm Schloss , he muttered — “ a foot on the 
old soil once more ! and an entrance into the great arena with 
hands unfettered. Is it possible? — is it — is it?” 

At this moment the door-bell of the apartment rang, and a 
E* 


106 


THE PARISIANS. 


servant whom Graham had hired at Paris as a ktquais de 
place announced “ Ce Monsieur." 

Graham hurried the letter into his portfolio, and said, 

You mean the person to whom I am always at home?” 

“ The same, Monsieur.” 

“ Admit him, of course.” 

There entered a wonderfully thin man, middle-aged, clothed 
in black, his face cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, with 
one of those faces which, to use a French expression, “ say 
nothing.” It was absolutely without expression — it had 
not even, despite its thinness, one salient feature. If you 
had found yourself anywhere seated next to that man, your 
eye would have passed him over as too insignificant to notice ; 
if at a cu/e, you would have gone on talking to your friend 
without lowering your voice : what mattered it whether a 
hete like that overheard or not? Had you been asked to 
guess his calling and station, you might have said, minutely 
observing the freshness of his clothes and the undeniable 
respectability of his tout ensemble^ “ He must be well off, and 
with no care for customers on his mind — a ci-devant chandler 
who has retired on a legacy.” 

Graham rose at the entrance of his visitor, motioned him 
courteously to a seat beside him, and, waiting till the laqnats 
had vanished, then asked, “ What news?” 

“ None, I fear, that will satisfy Monsieur. I have certainly 
hunted out, since I had last the honor to see you, no less than 
four ladies of the name of Duval, but only one of them took 
that name from her parents, and was also christened Louise.” 
“ Ah — Louise !” 


THE PARISIANS. 


107 


“ Yes, the daughter of a perfumer, aged twenty-eight. She, 
therefore, is not the Louise you seek. Permit me to refer to 
your instructions.” Here M. Renard took out a note-book, 
turned over the leaves, and resumed : “ Wanted, Louise Duval, 
daughter of Auguste Duval, a French drawing-master, who 
lived for many years at Tours, removed to Paris in 1845, lived 
at No. 12 Rue de S at Paris for some years, but after- 

wards moved to a different quartier of the town, and died, 

1848, in Rue L , No. 39. Shortly after his death, his 

daughter Louise left that lodging, and could not be traced. 
In 1849 official documents reporting her death were forwarded 
from Munich to a person (a friend of yours. Monsieur). 
Death, of course, taken for granted ; but nearly five years 
afterwards this very person encountered the said Louise Duval 
at Aix-la-Chapelle, and never heard nor saw more of her. 
Demande submitted, to find out said Louise Duval or any 
children of hers born in 1848-9 ; supposed in 1852-3 to 
have one child, a girl, between four and five years old. Is 
that right. Monsieur?” 

“ Quite right.” 

“ And this is the whole information given to me. Monsieur 
on giving it asked me if I thought it desirable that he should 
commence inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, where Louise Duval 
was last seen by the person interested to discover her. I 
reply. No ; pains thrown away. Aix-la-Chapelle is not a 
place where any Frenchwoman not settled there by marriage 
would remain. Nor does it seem probable that the said Duval 
would venture to select for her residence Munich, a city in 
which she had contrived to obtain certificates of her death. 


1C8 


THE PARISIANS. 


A Frenchwoman who has once known Paris always wants to 
get back to it ; especially, Monsieur, if she has the beauty 
which you assign to this lady. I therefore suggested that our 
inquiries should commence in this capital. Monsieur agreed 
with me, and I did not grudge the time necessary for investi- 
gation.” 

‘‘You were most obliging. Still, I am beginning to be im- 
patient if time is to be thrown away.” 

“ Naturally. Permit me to return to my notes. Monsieur 
informs me that twenty-one years ago, in 1848, the Parisian 
police were instructed to find out this lady, and failed, but 
gave hopes of discovering her through her relations. He 
asks me to refer to our archives; I tell him that is no use. 
However, in order to oblige him, I do so. No trace of such 
inquiry — it must-have been, as Monsieur led me to suppose, 
a strictly private one, unconnected with crime or with politics ; 
and, as I have the honor to tell Monsieur, no record of such 
investigations is preserved in the E-ue Jerusalem. Great 
scandal would there be, and injury to the peace of families, 
if we preserved the results of private inquiries intrusted to 
us — by absurdly jealous husbands, for instance. Honor, 
Monsieur, honor forbids it. Next I suggest to Monsieur that 
his simplest plan would be an advertisement in the French 
journals, stating, if I understand him right, that it is for the 
pecuniary interest of Madame or Mademoiselle Duval, daughter 
of Auguste Duval, artiste en dessin, to come forward. Mon- 
sieur objects to that.” 

“ I object to it extremely. As I have told you, this is a 
strictly confidential inquiry, and an advertisement, which in 


THE PARISIANS. 


109 


all likelihood would be practically useless (it proved to be so 
in a former inquiry), would not be resorted to unless all else 
failed, and even then with reluctance.” 

‘‘ Quite so. Accordingly, Monsieur delegates to me, who 
have been recommended to him as the best person he can 
employ in that department of our police which is not con- 
nected with crime or political surveillance^ a task the most 
difficult. I have, through strictly private investigations, to 
discover the address and prove the identity of a lady bearing 
a name among the most common in France, and of whom 
nothing has been heard for fifteen years, and then at so migra- 
tory an endroit as Aix-la-Chapelle. You will not or cannot 
inform me if since that time the lady has changed her name 
by marriage.” 

“ I have no reason to think that she has ; and there are 
reasons against the supposition that she married after 1849.” 

“ Permit me to observe that the more details of informa- 
tion Monsieur can give me, the easier my task of research 
will be.” 

t 

“ I have given you all the details I can, and, aware of the 
difficulty of tracing a person with a name so much the re- 
verse of singular, I adopted your advice in our first inter- 
view, of asking some Parisian friend of mine, with a large 
acquaintance in the miscellaneous societies of your capital, 
to inform me of any ladies of that name whom he might 
chance to encounter ; and he, like you, has lighted upon one 
or two who, alas J resemble the right one in name, and nothing 
more.” 

“ You will do wisely to keep him on the watch as well as 


no 


THE PARISIANS. 


myself. If it were but a murderess or a political incendiary, 
then you might trust exclusively to the enlightenment of our 
corps; but this seems an affair of sentiment, Monsieur. Sen- 
timent is not in our way. Seek the trace of that in the 
haunts of pleasure.” 

M. Renard, having thus poetically delivered himself of 
that philosophical dogma, rose to depart. 

Graham slipped into his hand a bank-note of suflScient 
value to justify the profound bow he received in return. 

When M. Renard had gone, Graham heaved another im- 
patient sigh, and said to himself, “ No, it is not possible — at 
least not yet.” 

Then, compressing his lips as a man who forces himself to 
something he dislikes, he dipped his pen into the inkstand, 
and wrote rapidly thus to his kinsman : — 


My dear Cousin, — I lose not a post in replying to your 
kind and considerate letter. It is not in my power at present 
to return to England. I need not say how fondly I cherish 
the hope of representing the dear old county some day. If 
Vavasour could be induced to defer his resignation of the seat 
for another session, or at least for six or seven months, why, 
then I might be free to avail myself of the opening; at 
present I am not. Meanwhile, I am sorely tempted to buy 
back the old Lodge — probably the brewer would allow me to 
leave on mortgage the sum I myt:>elf have on the property, and 
a few additional thousands. I have reasons for not wishing 
to transfer at present much of the money now invested in the 
funds. I will consider this point, which probably does not 
press. 

I reserve all Paris news till my next ; and, begging you to 


THE PARISIANS. 


Ill 


forgive so curt and unsatisfactory a reply to a letter so impor- 
tant that it excites me more than I like to own, believe me, 
Your affectionate friend and cousin, 

Graham. 


CHAPTER 11. 

At about the same hour on the same day in which the 
Englishman held the conference with the Parisian detective 
just related, the Marquis de Rochebriant found himself by 
appointment in the cabinet d'affaires of his avoui M. Gan- 
drin : that gentleman had hitherto not found time to give 
him a definitive opinion as to the case submitted to his ^dg- 
ment. The avoui received Alain with a kind of forced civility, 
in which the natural intelligence of the Marquis, despite his 
inexperience of life, discovered embarrassment.. 

“ Monsieur le Marquis,” said Gandrin, fidgeting among the 
papers on his bureau, “ this is a very complicated business. I 
have given not only my best attention to it, but to your 
general interests. To be plain, your estate, though a fine one, 
is fearfully incumbered — fearfully — ^frightfully.” 

• “ Sir,” said the Marquis, haughtily, “ that is a fact which 

was never disguised from you.” 

“I do not say that it was, Marquis ; but I scarcely real- 
ized the amount of the liabilities nor the nature of the 
property. It will be difficult — nay, I fear, impossible — to 
find any capitalist to advance a sum that will cover the mort- 
gages at an interest less than you now pay. As for a Com- 


112 


THE PARISIANS. 


pany to take the whole trouble off your hands, clear off the 
mortgages, manage the forests, develop the fisheries, guarantee 
you an adequate income, and at the end of twenty-one years 
or so render up to you or your heirs the free enjoyment of an 
estate thus improved, we must dismiss that prospect as a wild 
dream of my good friend M. Hebert’s. People in the prov- 
inces do dream ; in Paris everybody is wide awake.” 

“ Monsieur,” said the Marquis, with that inborn imper- 
turbable loftiness of sang froid which has always in adverse 
circumstances characterized the Prench noblesse^ ‘‘be kind 
enough to restore my papers. I see that you are not the man 
for me. Allow me only to thank you, and inquire the amount 
of my debt for the trouble I have given.” 

“ Perhaps you are quite justified in thinking I am not the 
man for you, Monsieur le Marquis ; and your papers shall, if 
you decide on dismissing me, be returned to you this evening. 
But as to my accepting remuneration where I have rendered 
no service, I request M. le Marquis to put that out of the 
question. Considering myself, then, no longer your avoue^ 
do not think I take too great a liberty in volunteering my 
counsel as a friend — or a friend at least to M. Hebert, if you 
do not vouchsafe my right so to address yourself.” 

M. Gandrin spoke with a certain dignity of voice and , 
manner which touched and softened his listener. 

“ You make me your debtor far more than I pretend to 
repay,” replied Alain. “ Heaven knows I want a friend; and 
I will heed with gratitude and respect all your counsels in 
that character.” 

“ Plainly and briefly, my advice is this : Monsieur Louvier 


THE PARISIANS. 


113 


is tlio principal mortgagee. He is among the six richest ne- 
gotiators of Paris. He does not, therefore, want money ; but. 
like most self-made men, he is very accessible to social vani- 
ties. He would be proud to think he had rendered a service 
to a Hochebriant. Approach him, either through me, or, far 
better, at once introduce yourself, and propose to consolidate 
all your other liabilities in one mortgage to him, at a rate of 
interest lower than that which is now paid to some of the 
small mortgagees. This would add considerably to your in- 
come, and would carry out M. Hebert’s advice.” 

“ But does it not strike you, dear M. G-andrin, that such 
going cap in hand to one who has power over my fate, while 
I have none over his, would scarcely be consistent with my 
self-respect, not as Rochebriant only, but as Frenchman ?” 

“ It does not strike me so in the least ; at all events, I 
could make the proposal on your behalf, without compro- 
mising yourself, though I should be far more sanguine of 
success if you addressed M. Louvier in person.” 

“ I should nevertheless prefer leaving it in your hands ; but 
even for that I must take a few days to consider. Of all the 
mortgagees M. Louvier has been hitherto the severest and 
most menacing, the one whom Hebert dreads the most ; and 
should he become sole mortgagee my wlf^le estate would pass 
to him if through any succession of bad seasons and failing 
tenants the interest was not punctually paid.” 

“ It could so pass to him now.” 

“ No ; for there have been years in which the other mort- 
gagees, who are Bretons and would be loath to ruin a Roche- 
briant, have been lenient and patient.” 

VoL. I. 8 


114 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ If Louvier has not been equally so, it is only because he 
knew nothing of j^ou, and your father no doubt had often 
sorely tasked his endurance. Come, suppose we manage to 
break the ice easily. Do me the honor to dine here to meet 
him ; you will find that he is not an unpleasant man.” 

The Marquis hesitated, but the thought of the sharp and 
seemingly hopeless struggle for the retention of his ancestral 
home to which he would be doomed if he returned from Paris 
unsuccessful in his errand overmastered his pride. He felt 
as if that self-conquest was a duty he owed to the very tombs 
of his fathers. “ I ought not to shrink from the face of a 
creditor,” said he, smiling somewhat sadly, “ and I accept the 
proposal you so graciously make.” 

“ You do well. Marquis, and I will write at once to Louvier 
to ask him to give me his first disengaged day.” 

The Marquis had no sooner quitted the house than M. 
Gandrin opened a door at the side of his ofiice, and a large 
portly man strode into the room — stride it was rather than 
step — firm, self-assured, arrogant, masterful. 

“Well, mon ami^^ said this man, taking his stand at the 
hearth, as a king might take his stand in the hall of his 
vassal, “ and what says omx 'petit 'muscadinf' 

“ He is neither nor m'mcadin^ Monsieur Louvier,” re- 
plied Gandrin, peevishly ; “ and he will task your powers to 
get him thoroughly into your net. But I have persuaded him 
to meet you here. What day can you dine with me ? I had 
better ask no one else.” 

“ To-morrow I dine with my friend 0 , to meet the 

chiefs of the Opposition,” said Monsieur Louvier, with a sort 


THE PARISIANS. 


115 


of careless rollicking pomposity. “ Thursday with Pereira — 
Saturday I entertain at home. Say Friday. Your hour?” 

“ Seven.” 

“ Good ! Show me those Rochebriant papers again ; there 
is something I had forgotten to note. Never mind me. Go 
on with your work as if I were not here.” 

Louvier took up the papers, seated himself in an arm- 
chair by the fireplace, stretched out his legs, and read at his 
ease, but with a very rapid eye, as a practiced lawyer skims 
through the technical forms of a case to fasten upon the 
marrow of it. 

“ Ah I as I thought. The farms could not pay even the 
interest on my present mortgage ; the forests come in for that. 
If a contractor for the yearly sale of the woods was bankrupt 
and did not pay, how could I get my interest ? Answer me 
that, Gandrin.” 

“ Certainly you must run the risk of that chance.” 

“ Of course the chance occurs, and then I foreclose* — I 
seize, — Rochebriant and its seigneuries are mine.” 

As he spoke he laughed, not sardonically — a jovial laugh 
— and opened wide, to reshut as in a vice, the strong iron 
hand which had doubtless closed over many a man’s all. 

‘‘Thanks. On Friday, seven o’clock.” He tossed the 
papers back on the bureau, nodded a royal nod, and strode 
forth imperiously as he had strided in. 


For the sake of the general reader, English technical words are here, 
as elsewhere, substituted as much as possible for French. 


CHAPTER III. 


Meanwhile the young Marquis pursued his way thought- 
fully through the streets, and entered the Champs Elys4es. 
Since we first, nay, since we last saw him, he is strikingly im- 
proved in outward appearances. He has unconsciously acquired 
more of the easy grace of the Parisian in gait and bearing. 
You would no longer detect the provincial — perhaps, how- 
ever, because he is now dressed, though very simply, in habili- 
ments that belong to the style of the day. Rarely among the 
loungers in the Champs Elys^es could be seen a finer form, a 
comelier face, an air of more unmistakable distinction. 

The eyes of many a passing fair one gazed on him ad- 
miringly or coquettishly. But he was still so little the true 
Parisian that they got no smile, no look in return. He was 
wrapt in his own thoughts ; was he thinking of M. Louvier ? 

He had nearly gained the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne, 
when he was accosted by a voice behind, and, turning round, 
saw his friend Lemercier arm in arm with Graham Vane. 

^^Bonjour, Alain,” said Lemercier, hooking his disengaged 
arm into Rochebriant’s. “ I suspect we are going the same 
way.” 

Alain felt himself change countenance at this conjecture, 
and replied coldly, “ I think not ; I have got to the end of 
my walk, and shall turn back to Paris.” Addressing himself 
to the Englishman, he said, with formal politeness, “ I regret 
116 


THE PARISIANS. 


117 


not to have found you at home when I called some weeks ago, 
and no less so to have been out when you had the complais- 
ance to return my visit.” 

“ At all events,” replied the Englishman, “ let me not lose 
the opportunity of improving our acquaintance which now 
offers. It is true that our friend Lemercier, catching sight 
of me in the Rue de Rivoli, stopped his coup6 and carried 
me off for a promenade in the Bois. The fineness of the day 
tempted us to get out of his carriage as the Bois came in sight. 
But if you are going back to Paris I relinquish the Bois and 
offer myself as your companion.” 

Rrederic (the name is so familiarly English that the reader 
might think me pedantic did I accentuate it as French) looked 
from one to the other of his two friends, half amused and 
half angry. 

“ And am I to be left alone to achieve a conquest in which, 
if I succeed, I shall change into hate and envy the affection 
of my two best friends ? — Be it so. 

‘ Un veritable amant ne connait point d'amia.’” 

“ I do not comprehend your meaning,” said the Marquis, 
with a compressed lip and a slight frown. 

“ Bah !” cried Frederic ; “ come, franc jeu — cards on the 
table — M. Grarm Varn was going into the Bois at my sugges- 
tion on the chance of having another look at the pearl-colored 
angel ; and you, Rochebriant, can’t deny that you were going 
into the Bois for the same object.” 

“ One may pardon an enfant terrible f said the Englishman, 
laughing, “ but an ami terrible should be sent to the galleys. 


118 


THE PARISIANS. 


Come, Marquis, let us walk back and submit to our fato> 
Even were the lady once more visible, we have no chance of 
being observed by the side of a Lovelace so accomplished and 
so audacious.” 

“ Adieu, then, recreants — I go alone. Victory or death.” 

The Parisian beckoned his coachman, entered his carriage, 
and with a mocking grimace kissed his hand to the com- 
panions thus deserting or deserted. 

Rochebriant touched the Englishman’s arm, and said, “ Do 
you think that Lemercier could be impertinent enough to 
accost that lady ?” 

“ In the first place,” returned the Englishman, “ Lemercier 
himself tells me that the lady has for several weeks relin- 
quished her walks in the Bois, and the probability is, there- 
fore, that he will not have the opportunity to accost her. In 
the next place, it appears that when she did take her solitary 
walk she did not stray far from her carriage, and was in reach 
of the protection of her laquais and coachman. But to speak 
honestly, do you, who know Lemercier better than I, take him 
to be a man who would commit an impertinence to a woman 
unless there were viveurs of his own sex to see him do it?” 

Alain smiled. “ No. Frederic’s real nature is an admira- 
ble one, and if he ever do anything that he ought to be 
ashamed of, ’twill be from the pride of showing how finely he 
can do it. Such was his character at college, and such it still 
seems at Paris. But it is true that the lady has forsaken her 
former walk ; at least I — I have not seen her since the day I 
first beheld her in company with Frederic. Yet — ^yet, pardon 
me, you were going to the Bois on the chance of seeing her. 


THE PARISIANS. 


119 


Perhaps she has changed the direction of her walk, and — 
and ’ ’ 

The Marquis stopped short, stammering and confused. 

The Englishman scanned his countenance with the rapid 
glance of a practiced observer of men and things, and after 
a short pause said, “ If the lady has selected some other spot 
for her promenade, I am ignorant of it ; nor have I even vol- 
unteered the chance of meeting with her, since I learned — 
first from Lemercier, and afterwards from others — that her 
destination is the stage. Let us talk frankly, Marquis. I 
am accustomed to take much exercise on foot, and the Bois 
is my favorite resort ; one day I there found myself in the 
alUe which the lady we speak of used to select for her prom- 
enade, and there saw her. Something in her face impressed 
me; how shall I describe the impression? Did you ever 
open a poem, a romance, in some style wholly new to you, and 
before you were quite certain whether or not its merits justi- 
fied the interest which the novelty inspired, you were sum- 
moned away, or the book was taken out of your hands ? If 
so, did you not feel an intellectual longing to have another 
glimpse of the book? That illustration describes my im- 
pression, and I own that I twice again went to the same alUe. 
The last time, I only caught sight of the young lady as she 
was getting into her carriage. As she was then borne away, 
I perceived one of the custodians of the Bois, and learned, 
on questioning him, that the lady was in the habit of walking 
always alone in the same allee at the same hour on most fine 
days, but that he did not know her name or address. A 
motive of curiosity — perhaps an idle one — then made me ask 


120 


THE PARISIANS. 


Lemercier, who boasts of knowing his Paris so intimately, if 
he could inform me who the lady was. He undertook to 
ascertain.” 

“ But, ' interposed the Marquis, “ he did not ascertain who 
fdie was ; he only ascertained where she lived, and that she 
and an elder companion were Italians, — whom he suspected, 
without sufficient ground, to be professional singers.” 

“ True ; but since then I ascertained more detailed particu- 
lars from two acquaintances of mine who happen to know her 
— M. Savarin, the distinguished writer, and Mrs. Morley, an 
accomplished and beautiful American lady, who is more than 
an acquaintance : I may boast the honor of ranking among 

her friends. As Savarin’s villa is at A , I asked him 

incidentally if he knew the fair neighbor whose face had so 
attracted me ; and Mrs. Morley being present, and overhear- 
ing me, I learned from both what I now repeat to you. 

“ The young lady is a Signorina Cicogna — at Paris ex- 
changing (except among particular friends), as is not unusual, 
the outlandish designation of Signorina for the more conven- 
tional one of Mademoiselle. Her father was a member of the 
noble Milanese family of the same name ; therefore the young 
lady is well born. Her father has been long dead ; his widow 
married again an English gentleman settled in Italy, a scholar 
and antiquarian ; his name was Selby. This gentleman, also 
dead, bequeathed the Signorina a small but sufficient com- 
petence. She is now an orphan, and residing with a com- 
panion, a Signora Yenosta, who was once a singer of some re- 
pute at the Neapolitan Theatre, in the orchestra of which her 
husband was principal performer ; but she relinquished the 


THE PARISIANS. 


121 


stage several yeai:s ago on becoming a widow, and gave lessons 
as a teacher.! She has the character of {being a scientific 
musiciaft-, and of unblemished private respectability.} Subse- 
quently she w^, induced to give up general teaphirig, and 
undertake th.ejmusical education and the social charge of the 
young lady with her. This girl is said to have early given 
promise of extraordinary- excellence as a singer, and excited 
great interest among a, coterie of literary critics and musical 
cognoscentu She was to have come out at the Theatre of 
Milan a year or two ago, but her career has been suspended 
in consequence of ill health, for which she is now at Paris 
under the care of an. English physician . who :has made ref- 
markable cures in all complaints of the respiratory organs; 
M — — , the great composer, vho knows her, says that in ex- 
pression and feeling she has .no- living superior, perhaps no 
equal since Malibran.’h ' 

“ You seem, dear Monsieur, to have taken much pains to 
acquire this information.” 

“ No great pains were necessary ; but had they been I 
might have taken them, for, as I have owned to you, MadCr 
moiselle Cicogna, while she was yet a mystery to me,' strangely 
interested my thoughts or my fancies. That interest has 
now ceased. The world of actresses and singers lies apitt 
froui;Uiiue.” ‘ •' ' 'i 

“ Yet}” saidjjAlain, in U' tone of voice that implied doubt, 
“ if I understand, Lem ercier aright, you were going with him 
to the Bois on the chance of seeing again the lady, in whom 
your interest has peased.” 

Lemercier’s account was not strictly accurate. He stopped 
VoL. I. — F 


122 


THE PARISIANS. 


his carriage to speak to me on quite another subject, on which 
I have consulted him, and then proposed to take me on to the 
Bois. I assented ; and it was not till we were in the carriage 
that he suggested the idea of seeing whether the pearly-rbbcd 
lady had resumed her walk in the alUe. You may judge how 
indifferent I was to that chance when I preferred turning back 
with you to going on with him. Between you and me. Mar- 
quis, to men of our age, who have the business of life before 
them, and feel that if there be aught in which noblesse oblige 
it is a severe devotion to noble objects, there is nothing more 
fatal to such devotion than allowing the heart to be blown 
hither and thither at every breeze of mere fancy, and dream- 
ing ourselves into love with some fair creature whom we never 
could marry consistently with the career we have set before 
our ambition. I could not fiaarry an actress — neither, I pre- 
sume, could the Marquis de Rochebriant; and the thought 
of a courtship, which excluded the idea of marriage, to a 
young orphan of name unblemished — of virtue unsuspected 
— would certainly not be compatible with ‘ devotion to noble 
objects.' ” 

Alain involuntarily bowed his head in assent to the propo- 
sition, and, it may be, in submission to an implied rebuke: 
The two men walked in silence for some minutes, and Giraham 
first spoke, changing altogether the subject of conversation. ' 

“ Lemercier tells me you decline going much into this 
world of Paris — the capital of capitals-^which appears so 
irresistibly attractive to us foreigners.” 

“ Possibly ; but, to borrow your words, I have the business 
of life before me.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


12X 


“ Business is a good safeguard against the temptations to 
excess in pleasure, in which Paris abounds. But there is no 
business which does not admit of some holiday, and all busi- 
ness necessitates commerce with mankind. A propos, I was 
the other evening at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s — a brilliant 
assembly, filled with ministers, senators, and courtiers. I 
heard your name mentioned.” 

“Mine?” 

“ Yes ; Duplessis, the rising financier — who, rather to my 
surprise, was not only prdsent among these official and deco- 
rated celebrities, but apparently quite at home among therd 
— asked the Duchesse if she had not seen you since your 
arrival at Paris. She replied, ‘ No ; that though you were 
among her nearest connections, you had not called on her ;* 
and bade Duplessis to tell you that you were a monstre for not 
doing so. Whether or not Duplessis will take that liberty, I 
know not ; but you must pardon me if I do. She is a very 
charming woman, full of talent; and that stream of the world 
which reflects the ittars, with all their mythical influences on 
fortune, flows through her sa?ons.” 

I am not born under those stars. I am a Legitimist.” 

“ I did hot forget your political creed ; but in England the 
leaders of opposition attend the salons of the Prime Minister. 
A man is not supposed to compromise his opinions because he 
exchanges social courtesies with those to whom his opinions 
are hostile. Pray excuse me if I am indiscreet,— I speak as 
a traveler who asks for information, — ^but do the' Legitimists 
really believe that they best serve their cause by declining 
any mode of coinpeting with its opponents,? Would there 


124 


TITE PARISIANS. 


not be a fairer chance for the ultimate victory of their princi- 
ples if they made their talents and energies individually promi-; 
nent— if they were known as skillful generals, practical states-^ 
men, eminent 1 diplomatists j brilliant writers? Could: they 
combine — not to sulk’ and exclude ^themselves from the gredt 
battle-field of the world-^but in their several wa^s to fender 
themselves of such use to their country that some day of 
other, in one of those revolutionary crises to whieh France, 
aksl : must long be subjected, they would find ithemSelves 
able to turn i the scale of undecided cpunsels and conflicting 
jealousiesv’^ ; • :d ^ ' :.{ ; 

' ‘‘' Monsieur, we hope for the day when the Divide Disposer 
of events will strike into the hearts of bur fickle and erring 
couiltiymen the conviction that there will be no settled repose 
for Fliance save under the. sceptre of her rightful kin^. ' But 
hicanwhile we are — I see it inofe clearly sitice I have quitted 
Bretagne — ^we are a hopeless minority.” 

^ “ Does not history tell us that the great changes of the 

world have been wrought by minorities ?— but on thii one con- 
dition that the minorities shall hot bediopeless? If is almoi^ 
the other da^ that the Bonapartists were in a minority that 
their adversaries 'Called hopeless; and the majoritjriifof the 
Emperor is now so preponderanf that I tremble for his safety. 
When a ihajorlty becomes So' vast thkt' intellect disappears in 
the crowd, Ihe date of its dei^fuction commences; for by the 
law' of , reaction the minorit;^ is installed agdnst it/ It is the 
natufe oflthihgs that ' minorities are always more intellectliasl 
than ' multitudes, -and intellect is ever at work in upping 
nuihefical Ibrce. What your party wants is hope; because 


THE PARISIANS. 


125 


withoxit hope there is no energy. I remember hearing my 
father say that when he met the Count de Chambdrd at Ems 
that illustrious personage delivered himself of a hetJ'e-^ phrase 
much admired by his partisatis. The Emperor was then 
President of the Republic, in -a W^ry doubtful ^ and dangerous 
position. France seemed on the Verge of another convulsiom 
'K certaip distinguished politician recommended the Count de 
Chambord toehold himsejf ready to enter at on co as a candi- 
date for the throne. And the Count, with a benignant smile 
oh his handsome: face, answered, ^ All wrecks come to the 
shore-^the shore does not'go.to the wrecks.’” 

' “ Beautifully: said !’• exclaimed the Marquis. jir 

Not i^ Leheau est toxijoufs 'le vraii My father, .no inex- 
perienced or unwise politician, in repeating the royal words 
remarked, ’The fallacy of the Count’s argumeirt is in- its 
metaphor. A 'man is hot a shore. Bo you not think that 
the seamen on bOafd the wrecks would be more grateful tc 
him who did not complacently compare himself to a shore^ 
but considered himself a human being like themselves, and 
risked his own life- in a boat, even though it were a cockier 
shell, in the chance of saving theirs ?’ ” ; • , : /i 

Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man j with that intense 
sentiment of . patriotism which characterizes Frenchmen of 
every rank and persuasion, unless they belong -to the Inter- 
nationalists; and without pausing to consider, lie cried, Your 
father was right.” ‘ , 

The Englishman, resumed ; Need I say, my dear Marquis; 
that I am not a Legitimist? I am not an Imperialist, neither 
am I an Orleanlst nor a Republican. Between all those 


126 


THE PARISIANS. 


political divisions it is for Frenchmen to make their choice, 
and for Englishmen to accept for France that government 
which France has established, I view things here as a simple 
observer. But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in 
your position I should think myself unworthy my ancestors 
if I consented to be an insignificant looker-on.” 

“ You are not in my position,” said the Marquis, half 
mournfully, half haughtily, and you can scarcely judge of 
it even in imagination.” 

“ I need not much task my imagination ; I judge of it by 
analogy. I was very much in your position when I entered 
upon what I venture to call my career; and it is the curious 
similarity between us in circumstances that made me wish for 
your friendship when that similarity was made known to me 
by Lemercier, who is not less garrulous than the true Parisian 
usually is. Permit me to say that, like you, I was reared in 
some pride of no inglorious ancestry. I was reared also in 
the expectation of great wealth. Those expectations were not 
realized : my father had the fault of noble natures — generosity 
pushed to imprudence: he died poor, and in debt. You 
retain the home of your ancestors ; I had to resign mine.” 

The Marquis had felt deeply interested in this narrative, 
and as Graham now paused, took his hand and pressed it. 

“One of our most eminent personages said to me about 
that time, * Whatever a clever man of your age determines to 
do or to be, the odds are twenty to one that he has only to 
live on in order to do or to be it.’ Don’t you think he spoke 
truly? I think so.” 

“I scarcely know what to think,” said Bochebriant ; “I 


THE PARISIANS. 


127 


feel as if you had given me so rough a shake when I was in 
the midst of a dull dream, that I do not yet know whether I 
am asleep or awake.” 

Just as he said this, and towards the Paris end of the 
Champs Elysees, there was a halt, a sensation among the 
loungers round them : many of them uncovered in salute. 

A man on the younger side of middle age, somewhat in- 
clined to corpulence, with a very striking countenance, was 
riding slowly by. He returned the salutations he received 
with the careless dignity of a personage accustomed to respect, 
and then reined in his horse by the side of a barouche and 
exchanged some words with a portly gentleman who was its 
sole occupant. The loungers. Still halting, seemed to con- 
template this' parley between him on horseback and him in 
the carriage with very eager interest. Some put their hands 
behind their ears and pressed forward, as if trying to overhear 
what was said. 

“ I wonder,” quoth Graham, “ whether, with all his clever- 
ness, the Prince has in any way decided what lie means to do 
or to be.” 

“ The Prince !” said Rochebriant, rousing himself from 
reverie ; “ what Prince ?” 

“Do you not recognize him by his wonderful likeness to 
the first Napoleon — him on horseback talking to Louvier, the 
great financier ?” 

“ Is that stout bourgeois in the carriage Louvier — my 
mortgagee, Louvier?” 

“Your mortgagee, my dear Marquis? Well, he is rich 
enough to be a very lenient one upon pay-day.” 


128 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Hein ! — doubt his leniency,” said Alain. “ I havd 
promised my avou6 to meet him at dinner. Do you think 1 
did wrong?” 

“Wrong! of course not; he is likely to overwhelm you 
with civilities. Pray don^t infuse if he gives you an invita- 
tion to his soiree next Saturday^r-I am going' to it. One 
meets there the notabilities most interesting to study — artists, 
authors, politicians, Especially those who call themselves Re- 
publicans. He and the Prince agree in one thing — viz., the 
cordial reception they give to the men who would destroy the 
state of things upon which Prince and financier both thrive. 
Hillo I here comes Lemercier on return from the Bois.” 

Lemercier’s covpi stopped beside the fbotpath. ; “ What 
tidings of the .^” asked the Englishman. 

“ None ; she was not there. But I am rewarded — such an 
adventure — a dame of the haute voice — I believe she is a 
duchess. She was walking with a lap-dog, a pure Pomeranian; 
A strange poodle flew at the Pomeranian. I drove off the 
poodle, rescued the Pomeranian, received the most gracious 
thanks, the sweetest smile : femme superhe^ middle-aged. I 
prefer women of forty. An revoir) I am due at the club.” 

Alain felt a sensation of relief that Lemercier had not seen 
the lady in the pearl-colored dress, and quitted the English- 
man with a lightened heart. ! 


o:;! 



. .. CHAPTEE ly, ' , 

• ^^Piccola^fiecola^ com- icoHescl another mvitation from M. 
Lonvier for next ' This Was^ said 

in Italian by an eMerly^ lady bursting' noisily into the room-^ 
olderly,^ yet with a youthful expression of- face, owing perhaps 
to a pair. oP very vivacious black eyes. * She iWas' dressed after 
a somewhat slatternly fashion/in a wrajiper of crimson merino 
much the Worfee for wear, a blue handkerchief twisted turban- 
like round her head, and- 'her Teet encased in list slip^er^. 
The person to whom she uddre^ed herself ' Was a young ludy 
with dark hair,' which, desjnte its evident- redundance, W^ 
restrained into smooth glossy braids ol?’er- the forehead, arid at 
the crown o:^'^the small graceful head Into the 'sim||^le knot 
which Horace has described as ‘^Spartan.” Her dress con- 
trasted the speaker’s by an exquisite neaWss. We haVe seen 
her before as the lady in the pearl-colored robe, but seen now 
at home she looks much ' younger. She was One of those 
whom, encountered -in the streets or iri 'Society, orie might 
guess- to be married— probably a young bride; for thus seen 
there was about her an" air of dignity and ' of self-possessioh 
which suits well with the ideal of chaste youthful matronage; 
and in the expression of the face there- was -a pensive khoughfc- 
fulness beyond her years. But as she now sat by the operi 
window arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open 
on her lap, you would never have said, “ What a handsome 
F* 9 129 


130 


THE PARISIANS. 


woman !” you would have said, “ What a charming girl !’* 
All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh. The dig- 
nity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness 
of her expression in an untroubled serene sweetness. 

Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends en- 
gaged in some absorbing eause of thought, and who are in 
the ha.bit when they go out, especially if on:Solita,ry walks, to 
take that cause of thought with them. The friend may be 
an orator meditating his speech, a poet his verses, a lawyer a 
difficult case, a physician an intricate malady. If you have 
such a friend, and you observe him thus away from his home, 
his face will seem to you older and grayer. He is absorbed 
in the care that weighs on him. When you see him in a holi- 
day moment at his own fireside, the care is thrown aside ; per- 
haps he mastered while abroad the difficulty that had troubled 
him- he is cheerful, pleasant, sunny. This appears to be 
very much the case with persons of genius. When in their 
own houses we usually find them very playful and childliJ^ie. 
Most persons of real genius, whatever they may seem out qf 
doors, are very sweet-tempered at home ; and sweet temper is 
sympathizing and genial in the intercourse of private life. 
Certainly, observing this girl as she now bends over the 
flowers, it would be difficult to believe her to be the Isaura 
Cicogna whose letters to Madame de Grantmesnil exhibit the 
doubts and struggles of an unquiet, discontented, aspiring 
mind. Only in one or two passages in those letters would 
you have guessed at the writer in the girl as we now see 
her. 

It is in those passages where she expresses her love of bar- 


THE PARISIANS. 


131 


mony, and her repugnance to contest — those were character- 
istics you might have read in her face. 

Certainly the girl is very lovely. What long dark eyelashes, 
what soft, tender, dark-blue eyes— now that she looks up and 
smiles, what a bewitching smile it ip! — by what sudden play 
of rippling dimples the smile is enlivened and redoubled ! Do 
you notice one feature? in very showy beauties it is seldom 
noticed ; but I, being in my way a physiognomist, consider 
that it is always worth heeding as an index of character. It 
is the ear. Remark how delicately it is formed in her— none 
of that heaviness of lobe which is a sure sign of sluggish 
intellect and coarse perception. Hers is the artist’s ear. Note 
next those hands — how beautifully shaped ! small, but not 
doll-like hands — ready and nimble, fiim and nervous hands, 
that could work for a helpmate. By no means very wdiite, 
still less red, but somewhat embrowned as by the sun, such as 
you may not see in girls reared in southern climates, and in 
her perhaps betokening an impulsive character which h^d not 
accustomed itself, when at sport in the open air, to the thral- 
dom of gloves — very impulsive people even ,in cold climates 
seldom do. 

In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an idea of the 
sensitive, quick-moved, warm-blooded Henry II., the most im- 
pulsive of the Plantagenets, his contemporary chronicler tells 
us that rather than imprison those active hands of his even 
in hawking-gloves he would suffer his falcon to fix its sharp 
claws into his wrist.' No doubt there is a difference as to 
what is befitting between a burly bellicose creature like Henry 
II. and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna ; and one 


132 


THE PARISIANS. 

would not wish to see those dainty wrists of herS seamed and 
scarred by a falcon’s claws. But a girl may not be less ex-* 
quisitely feminine for slight, heed of artificial prettinesSes. 
Isaura had no need of pale' bloodless hands to seem one of 
Nature’s highest grade of gentlewomen even' to the most 
fastidious eyes. About her there was a charm apart from 
her mere beauty, and often .disturbed instead of h^ghtened 
by her mere intellect: it consisted in a combination of* ex- 
quisite artistic refinement, and of a generosity of character 
by which refinement was animated into vigor and warmth. 

The roota, which was devoted exclusively to Isaura, had in 
it much that spoke of the occupant. That room, when first 
taken furnished, had a good-deal of the comfortless showiness 
which belongs to ordinary furnished apartments in France, 
especially in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let for the summer 
—-thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw, stiff 
mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvetj a ‘talj 
secritcnre in a dark corner, an oval buhl table set. in taWdry 
ormolu, islanded in the centre of a -poor but gaudy Scotch 
carpet, and but one other table of dull walnut-wood standing 
clothless before a sofa to match the chairs ; the eternal ormolu 
clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu dandelabra on the 
dreary mantel-piece. Some of this garniture had been re- 
moved, others softened into cheeriness and; comfort. The 
room somehow or other — thanks partly to a very moderate 
expenditure in pretty twills with pretty borders, gracefully 
simple table-covers, with one or two additional small tables 
and easy-ehairs, two simple vases filled with flowers, — thanks 
still more to a nameless skill in rearrangement, and the dis- 


THE PARISIANS. 


133 


posal of .the sHght nicknacks and well-bound volumes wliicb, 
even in traveling, women who have cultivated the pleasures 
of taste carry -about with' them — ^^had been codxed' i'ntc/ that 
quiet harmouy; ' that -tbue bf consistent subdued coldr,' which 
correspouded with- the characteristics of the inmate. ' ‘ Mo^ 
people might have been puzdeci- where to place the ^ piano, a 
semi-grand, so as not to take up top^ much space in the little 
room ; but where it was plaped h seeped so at home that you 
might have supposed the room had been built for it. 

Ther^ are two kinds of fieatne^':''6ile ‘is'tbo evident, and 
makes everything about it ‘Seen! t^rite ah'd coid and stiff, ^nd 
another kind of neatness disappears’ from ‘our sight in a satis- 
fied ' sense of eompleteness— like soine exquisite, simple, 
finished- style of writitig— ah xVddison’s or a St. Pierrd’s. 

This last sort of’ n’dk'tnesS belonged to IsaUra, and brdught 
to mind the ’whll-knowh line bf Catullus when on recrossing 
his threshold he inVokes its welcome — a line thus rioC inele- 
gantly translated by Leigh Hunt — ‘ ; 

Smile every dimple on the cheek- of Home.” • 

I entreat the reader’s pardon' for this long descriptive digres- 
sion ; but Isaura is one of those characters which are called 
many-sided, and'tiiefrfore-inot very easy to comprehend.‘ She 
gives us one side of her character in her correspondence with 
Madame de' Hrailtmesnil, and another ‘^ide of it in her own 
home with her Italian companion — -half nurse, half chaptrori. 

“ Monsieur Louvier is indeed Very courteous,” said Isaura, 
looking up from the flower^ with’ the dimpled ‘smile we have 
noticed. “ But I think, that we should do well to 


134 


THE PARISIANS. 


stay at home on Saturday — not peacefully, for I owe you your 
revenge at eudirty 

“You can’t mean it, PiccolaV' exclaimed the Signora in 
evident consternation. “ Stay at home ! — why stay at home ? 
Euchre is very well when there is nothing else to do ; buf 
change is pleasant — le hon Dieu likes it — 

* Ne caldo ne gelo 
Resta mil in cielo.’ 

And such beautiful ices one gets at M. Louvier’s ! Did you 
taste the pistachio ice ? YVhat fine rooms, and so well lit up j 
; — I adore light. And the ladies so beautifully dressed— one 
sees the fashions. Stay at home — play at euchre indeed ! 
Piccola^ you cannot be so cruel to yourself — ^you are young.” 

“ But, dear Madre^ just consider — we are invited because 
we are considered professional singers: your reputation as 
such is of course established — mine is not ; but still I shall 
be asked to sing, as I was asked before ; and you know Dr. 

C forbids me to do so except to a very small audience ; 

and it is so ungracious always to say ‘ No and besides, did 
you not yourself say, when we came away last time from M. 
Louvier’s, that it was very dull — ^that you knew nobody — 
and that the ladies had such superb toilets that you felt 
mortified — and ” 

“ Zitto I zitto 1 you talk idly, Piccola — very idly. I was 
mortified then in my old black Lyons silk ; but have I not 
bought since then my beautiful Greek jacket— scarlet and 
gold lace ? and why should I buy it if I am not to show it ?” 

“ But, dear Madre^ the jacket is certainly very handsome, 


THE PAIIISIANS. 


135 


and will make an effect in a little dinner at the Savarins’ or 
Mrs. Morley’s. But in a great formal reception like M. Lou- 
vier’s will it not look — — ” 

“ Splendid !” interrupted the Signora. 

‘‘ But singolare." 

“ So .much the better ; did not that great English lady wear 
such a jacket^ and did not every one admire hei—piil tosto 
invidia cli^ cmlpassiqne^f' 

Isaura , sighed. Now, the jacket of the Signora was the 
subject of disquietude to her friend. It so happened that a 
young English lady of the highest rank and the rarest beauty 
had appeared at M. Louvier’s, and indeed generally in the 
beau monde of Paris, in a Greek jacket that became her very 
much. That jacket had fascinated, at M. Louvier’s, the eyes 
of the Signora. But of this Isaura was unaware. The 
Signora, on returning home from M. Louvier’s, had certainly 
lamented much over the mesquin appearance of her own old- 
fashioned Italian habiliments compared with the brilliant toilet 
of the gay Parisiennes ; and Isaura — quite woman’ enough to 
sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities^proposed 
the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal 
couturilres of Paris and adapt the Signora’s costunae to the 
fashions of the j^ce. But the Signora, having predeter- 
mined on a Greek jacket, and knowing by instinct that Isaura 
would be disposed to thwart that splendid predilection, had 
artfully suggested that ik would be better to go to co^Uu- 
Here with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced 
adviser, — and the c(mp4 only held two. ; 

As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, 


136 


THE PAlRISIANS. 


and dressed as l^ecamfe her years, and in excellent taste, Isanra 
thougtt this an admirable suggesticri, and, pressing into hbr 
chaperons hand a billet de hanque sufficient to re-equip her cap- 
d-pie^ dismissed the subject from her mind; But the Signora 
was much too cunning to submit her passion for the Greek 
jacket to the discCUraging ^'coninieiits of Madame Savarin. 
Monopolizing the she became® absolute m^lress of the 
situation. She went to no fashionable cow^wncre’s. She 
W'ent to a irmpasin ' that' she had seen advertised in the- 'Pelites 
''Affiches as. supplying superb -costumes for .fancy-balls and 
amateur performers in private theatricals. She returned home 
triumphant, with -a j-aOket' still moi*e dazzling to the eye than 
that of the- Englisb' lady. . i , . 

When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of 
Superstitious terror j as® of a comet or other blaring portent. 

“ Cosd ^stitpenda l^'’®^-^(stupendous thing !) ■ ® She might well 
be dismayed when thC Signora propoSe(i®to appCar -thus attired 
in M. Louvier’s salon. What might be admired as coquetry 
of dress in a young, beauty of rank so great that even a 
vulgarity in her would ' be called distinpnS^ Was certainly an 
audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly cl-det)a}nt musiC- 
teacher; - "1® - - 

But :h6w could Isaura, how can any onC of commota 
humanityj say tea woman resClved upon wearing a certain 
dress, “ You are not young and handsome enough for that’’ ? 
—Isaura could only murmur, “ Fot many reasons I would 
rather stay at home, dear 3/a .. . 

‘‘Ah ! I see you are ashamed of me,” said the Signora, in 
softened tones : “ very natural. When the nightingale sings 


THE P'ARISIAN^'. 


13V 


no more, she is only an ligly brown bird And therewith the 
Signora Venosta seated herself submissively, And began to cry 
On this Isaura sprang upj wound her arihs arOund the 
Signora’s heck, Soothed her with 'coaxing,* kissed and petted 
her', and ended hy sayingj f ‘ Of course we will gd'j^* ^hd?' ^ut 
letmo choose ydu 'Another dress — A darki-gi^een velvet trimmed 
with blonde^— blonde- becomes you So well.” ■ 

• “ No, no— I hate 'green velvet ; anybody can wear that. 
'Piccola^\ am not clever like thee j I, canhot amuse ihyself 
like thee with books. I am in a foreign latid. I have a poor 
head, but I have a big heart’ ’ (another burst of tears) ; arid 
that big heart is set on my- beautiful Grreek jacket.” 

' - “ Dearest said Isaura, half weeping- too, “ forgive 

me ; you are right.' T-hb Oteek jack^' is* spleridid ; I s-hal! 
be so pleased to see yoii. wear it; Prior Mei^re-^o pleased to 
think that itt' the foreigif land you are’ nob without srimethiing 
that pleases - - 

! iii: :- ' VIMIJI v ; - ' .J rr • 

‘-■•’•u -fn:.; lit - 

-ii'a ' 

CoJiFORMABLY with his engagement to meet M. LotiVier,' 
Alain found himself on the day and at the hour named in M. 
Gandrin’s sa7o?i. Gri' this occasion Madame Gandrin did not 
appear. Her husband was accustomed to give dineH (V hohmes. 
The great man had not yet arrived. “ I think. Marquis,” 
said M. Gandriri, “ that you will not regret havihg followed 
my advice: my representations have disposed LoUvier to regard 
F* 


138 


THE PARISIANS. 


you 'with much favor, and he is certainly flattered by being 
permitted to make your personal acquaintance.” 

The avou6 had scarcely finished this little speech, when M. 
Louvier was announced. He entered with a beaming smile, 
which did not detract from his imposing presence. His flat- 
terers had told him that he had a look of Louis Philippe ; 
therefore he had sought to imitate the dress and the bonhomie 
of that monarch of the middle class. He wore a wig elabor- 
ately piled up, and shaped his whiskers in royal harmony with 
the royal wig. Above all, he studied that social frankness of 
• manner with which the able sovereign dispelled awe of his 
presence or dread of his astuteness. Decidedly he was a man 
very pleasant to converse and to deal with — ^so long as there 
seemed to him something to gain and nothing to lose by being 
pleasant. He returned Alain’s bow by a cordial ofier of both 
expansive hands, into the grasp of which the hands of the 
aristocrat utterly disappeared. “Charmed to make your ac- 
quaintance, Marquis — still more charmed if you will let me 
be useful during your sejonr at Paris. Ma foi, excuse my 
bluntness, but you are a fort beau garcon. Monsieur, your 
father was a handsome man, but you beat him hollow. Gan- 
drin, my friend, would not you and I give half our fortunes 
for one year of this fine fellow’s youth spent at Paris? Peate! 
what love-letters we should have, with no need to buy them 
by billets de banqueV'- Thus he ran on, much to Alain’s con- 
fusion, till dinner was announced. Then there was somethin<>: 
grandiose in the frank bourgeois style wherewith he expanded 
his napkin and twisted one end into his waistcoat — it was so 
manly a renunciation of the fashions which a man so repanda 


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139 


in all circles might be supposed to follow ; — as if he were both 
too great and too much in earnest for such frivolities. He was 
evidently a sincere hon vivant^ and M. Grandrin had no less 
evidently taken all requisite pains to gratify his taste. The 
IMontrachet served with the oysters was of a precious vintage. 
ThjJt vin de madere which acconipanied the potage d la bisque 
would have contented an American. And how radiant became 
Louvier’s face when among the entrees he came upon laitanc^ 
de carpes ! “ The best thing in the world,” he cried, “ and 

one gets it so seldom since the old Rocher de Cancale has lost 
its renown. At private houses what does one get now ? — 
blanc de pmdet — flavorless trash. After all, Gandrin, when 
we lose the love-letters, it is some consolation .Ihat laitances de 
carpes and sauUs de foie gras are still left to fill up the void 
in our hearts. Marquis, heed my counsel ; cultivate betimes 
the taste for the table ; that and whist are the sole resources 
of declining years. You never met my old friend Talleyrand 
— ah, no 1 he was long before your time. He cultivated both, 
but he made two mistakes. No man’s intellect is perfect on 
all sides. He confined himself to one meal a day, and he 
never learned to play well at whist. Avoid his errors, my 
young friend- — avoid them. Gandrin, I guess this pine-apple 
is English — it is superb.” ; 

“ You are fight — a present from the Marquis of H .” 

“ Ah ! instead of a fee, I wager. The Marquis gives noth- 
ing for nothing, dear man ! Droll people the English. You 
have never visited England, I presume, cjier Rochebriant ?’ ’ 

The afiable financier had already made vast progress in 
familiarity with his silent fellow-guest. 


140 


THE PiWRISl ANS. 


When the dinTier Wfts over and the three men had re-entered 
the sahn for* coffee and liqueurs, G^andrin left Louvier and 
Alain alone, saying he was going to his cabinet for cigars. w]4eh 
he could recommend.' 'Then Louvier, lightly patting the hlar-r 
quis on the shotdder, said, with what the French call effxmon^ 
“ My dear Rochebriant, your, father and ! did not. quite under- 
stand each other.' d lie’ took a tone grandi seignekr that 
sonietimes wounded me ; and I ih)turn was perhaps too rude in 
asserting my rights — '■as creditor, shall I isayi^l-''^no» as fellow- 
citizen ' and Frenehtnen are so vain, so over-susceptible— fire 
up at a word— take ^offence when .‘bone is meant. We two, 
my deaii^ hoy,‘ bhould be superior to . such national foiblesi 
Bref—^1 have a mortgage on your lands. Why' should that 
thought' mar our friendship? At my age, though I am not 
yet -old,' one is flattered if the young like us — pleased if we 
can Oblige them and remove from their career any little ob- 
stacle. ib* its way.- Gandrin tells ine you wish to consolidate 
all the ‘charges on ybur estate into one on, lower rate of intetest.- 
Is'it so?”: ' ' • • : ..w, ,,! 

•“ I am so advised,” said' the Marquis. . . ' 

And very tightly advised ^ come and talk with me about it 
some day be!xt week. I hope to have a large sum of money 
se’’ free in a few days. Of course, mortgages On land don’t 
pay like speculations at the Bourse ; but I am rich, enough to 
please myself. We wilbsee-^we-will see.” 

• Here Gandrin returned; with the cigars; but, Alain at that 
time never smoked, and Louvier excused himself, with a laugh 
and a sly wink, On the ' plea that - he was going to pay his re- 
spects — as doubtless that joU gargon going to dp likewise 


THE PARiSIANS. 


141 


-—to a helU damte did not reckon the smell, of : tcfbacca 
among the perfumes of Houbigant or -Arabia: : jfv , ; , 

“ Meanwhile,” added .Louvier, turning to Gandrin, “ I have 
something '.to ! say ;to. -you; oUl, business about thqf eonttact for 
that new’ street of mine. hurryr^fterf opr youjUgiftaend 
has gone to (his ‘assignation.'” ^ - .fi t , - 

Alain could not misinterpret the hint,' and, in a;; few mo- 
ments took leave of Kis hoSt-^ more sutprised than disappointed 
that the financier hM not invited him, as Graham had; assumed 
he would,' to his soir4e the following/evening. , ,,, .ij 

When Alain was gone, Lonvier’s jovial manner disappeared 
also, and became bluffly rude rather than bluntly cordial. 

“ Gandrin, what did you mean by saying that the young 
man was no muscdkiii? Milscdidiii:— aristocrat — oifensive 
from top to; the/’ ' ' ^ : :iiiT 

“i You amaze me^yoU Sehmed to* take to him so cordi<dl^i’ 

: ^!And prrajT were' you- too’ bliud ,:to remark with what cold 
reserve; he responded to my UoudeScensioUS ? — -hofw he winced 
when I called him Bochfebnant ? ^how he colored ;wh.en, k called 
him ^dear boy’ ? -These aHstoorats, think w^: ought|,b> 
them on our knees When they; 'take our monuy and ”— hmo 
LouVief’S' face dark ened—i^educe our womcn.’?f,j| , 

“ Monsieur Louvier, in all France I, do, not ; know a 'greats 
aristocrat thamyoUrself.”' -, 7 ; ■ ; bril o.'f- .(im-rt ■. < 7 
I don’t know whether M7 Gandrin meant that speech jas a 
compliment; bUt M.fliouvier-.tookiifc iasIMch—^ajuglmd.. com- 
placently and rubbed his handset j !tAy^ ayhmilUonafires ure 
the; real afistocrats^ for they have power, ^ Us' my -heau'^ Marquis 
(Will soon find.' L'must bid you'goodmight. Of qourso I shall 


142 


THE PARISIANS. 


see Madame Gandrin and yourself to-morrow. Prepare for 
a motley gathering — -lots of democrats and foreigners, with 
artists and authors and such creatures.” 

“ Is that the reason why you did not invite the Marquis?” 

“ To be sure ; I would not shock so pure a Legitimist by 
contact with the sons of the people, and make him still colder 
to myself. No; when he comes to my house he shall meet 
lions and vvv&urs of the Tiaut ton, who will play into my hands 
by teaching him how to ruin himself in the quickest manner 
and in the ^enre Louis XV. Bon soir, mon vieux” 


CHAPTER VI. 

The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in 
M. Louvier’s salons, and missed his high-bred mien and mel- 
ancholy countenance. M. Louvier had been for some four 
vears a childless widower, but his receptions were not the less 
numerously attended, nor his establishment less magnificently 
monU, for the absence of a presiding lady : very much the 
contrary^; it was noticeable how much he had increased his 
status and prestige as a social personage since the death of 
his unlamented spouse. 

To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his 
triumphal car. She had been the heiress of a man who had 
amassed a great deal of money, — ^not in the higher walks of 
commerce, but in a retail trade. 

Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender ; he 
had entered life with an ample fortune and an intense desire 


THE PARISIANS. 


143 


to be admitted into those more brilliant circles in which fortune 
can be dissipated with iclxit. He might not have attained 
this object but for the friendly countenance of a young noble 
who was then 

‘‘ The glass of fashion and the mould of form.'* 

But this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came 
suddenly to grief ; and when the money-lender’s son lost that 
potent protector, the dandies, previously so civil, showed him 
a very cold shoulder. 

Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the 
fortune he had impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched 
into colossal speculations, and became enormously rich. ■ His 
aspirations for social rank now revived, but his wife sadly 
interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature ; sympathized 
little with her husband’s genius for accumulation ; always said 
he would end in a hospital ; hated Republicans ; despised 
autho'rs and artists; and by the ladies of the heau monde 
was pronounced common and vulgar. ‘ 

So long ,as she lived, it was impossible for Louvier to realize 
his ambition of having one of the salons which at Paris es- 
tablish celebrity and position. He could not then command 
those advantages of wealth which he especially coveted. He 
was eminently successful in doing this now. As soon as she 
was safe in P^re la Chaise, he enlarged his hotel by the pur- 
chase and annexation of an adjoining house ; redecorated and 
refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to 
his credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the 
purpose, a nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His 


144 


THE PARISIANS. 

poUection of picturea was flqt large, and consi^ed exclusively 
pf ,the. Er()uqh spjiojo), anciei^t and i3iodcrn,;for in a}l things 
Louyier affected the, patriot, . But, each ,qf thp^. pictui’es was 
a gem : such Watteaus ! such Greuzes ! such landscapes by 
Patel! and, above all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace 
V eruet, and’ Delaroche, were worth all the doubtful originals 
of,Pleniisli ,^dHtalian art which. make the ordinary bpasfe of 
private coUectpifSj 

These pictures occupied two- rooms of moderate' sizCj built 
for their reception, and lighted from aboveJ The great 
tO" which theyy led contained > treasures scarcely less : precioUs ; 
tho walls were covered with.thetrichest.silksi^vhich the looms 
of jLyoi^f pould produce..; ; Byery piece of furnitme here wa^ 
a work of art[ip;ite wiay’:, cpnsole-tables of Florentine tne^aioj 
inlaid with pearl, apd lapis-lazuli ; cabinets in which the. ext 
quisite designs. pf 'thp renaissance were carved' in .ebony:; colod-r 
sal vases of Russian, malachite, but wrought b’y French :aa:tistSi 
Thc yeiy nic knacks, spattered carelessly about the iropm might 
have been admired in the-cabinets-of -the; Ralazzo Pitti. Be- 
yond this, room jlay the danse ^ its ceiling painted .by 

7- — r, suppqrtedrby white, marhle cplumfls, the glazCd balcony 
and, tbpj pf fhe.roomj fillpd with tiers of eipticS. In 

the dining-room^ on .the same' floor, on the other sidd of the 
landing-place, werp stored^ in glazed buffets, not only vessels 
and salvers of plate; hiver : andi!g,old, but, more; costly still,' 
matchless , specimens pf Sevres and Limoges,, and mediaeval 
varieties of ,, Venetian glass. ^On the, gtouridiflpor, which 
opened p.n the lawn pf a large garden, Louvier had his suite 
oft private: apartments, furnished, as he said, simply, accord^ 


THE PARISIANS. 


145 


ing to English notions of comfort.” Englishmen would have 
said “ according to French notions of luxury.” Enough of 
these details, which a writer cannot give without feeling him- 
self somewhat vulgarized in doing so, but without a loose 
general idea of which a reader would not have an accurate 
conception of something not vulgar — of something grave, his- 
torical, possibly tragical, — the existence of a Parisian million- 
aire at the date of this narrative. 

The evidence of wealth was everywhere manifest at M. 
Louvier’s, but it was everywhere refined by an equal evidence 
of taste. The apartments devoted to hospitality ministered 
to the delighted study of artists, to whom free access was 
given, and of whom two or three might be seen daily in the 
“show-rooms,” copying pictures or taking sketches of rare 
articles of furniture or effects for palatial interiors. 

Among the things which rich English visitors of Paris 
most coveted to see was M. Louvier’s hotel ; and few among 
the richest left it without a sigh of envy and despair. Only 
in such London houses as belong to a Sutherland or a Holford 
could our metropolis exhibit a splendor as opulent and a taste 
as refined. 

M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies. 
At these were entertained the Liberals of every shade, from 
tricolor to ronge^ with the artists and writers most in vogue, 
pele-mtle with decorated diplomatists, ex-ministers, Orleanists, 
and Republicans, distinguished foreigners, plutocrats of the 
Bourse, and lions male and female from the arid nurse of that 
race, the Chauss^e d’Antin. Of his m6re select reunions 
something will be said later. 

VOL. I.— 0 


10 


146 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ And Ilow does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Mon 
sieur Vane ?” asked a Frenchman wiih a handsome intelligent 
countenance, very ciiiefully dressed, though in a somewhat by- 
gone fashion, and carrying off his tenth lustrum with an air 
too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight. 

This gentleman, the Yicomte de Brez4, was of good birth, 
and had a legitimate right to his title of Vicomte, which is 
more than can be said of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. 
He had no other property, however, than a principal share in 
an influential journal, to which he was a lively and sparkling 
contributor. In his youth, under the reign of Louis Philippe, 
he had been a chief among literary exquisites, and Balzac 
was said to have taken him more than once as his model for 
those brilliant young vauriens who figure in the great novelist’s 
comedy of ‘ Human Life.’ The Vicomte’s fashion expired 
with the Orleanist dynasty. 

“ Is it possible, my dear Vicomte,” answered Graham, “not 
to be pleased with a capital so marvelously embellished ?” 

“Embellished it maybe to foreign eyes,” said the Vicomte, 
sighing, “but not improved to the taste of a Parisian like 
me. I miss the dear Paris of old — the streets associated with 
my beaux jours are no more. Is there not something drearily 
monotonous in those interminable perspectives ? How fright- 
fully the way lengthens before one’s eyes ! In the twists and 
curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of see- 
ing how far one had to go from one spot to another — each 
tortuous street had a separate idiosyncrasy ; what picturesque 
diversities, what interesting recollections — all swept away ! 
Mon Dieu! and what for? Miles of florid facadts, staring 


THE PARISIANS. 


147 


and glaring at one with goggle-eyed pitiless windows ; — house- 
rents trebled ; and the consciousness that, if you venture to 
grumble, underground railways, like concealed volcanoes, can 
burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of bay- 
onets and muskets. This maudit empire seeks to keep its 
hold on France much as a grand seigneur seeks to enchain a 
nymph of the ballet, — tricks her out in finery and baubles, 
and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to satisfy her 
whims.” 

“ Vicomte,” answered Graham, “ I have had the honor to 
know you since I was a small boy at a preparatory school 
home for the holidays, and you were a guest at my father’s 
country-house. You were then feti as one of the most prom- 
ising writers among the young men of the day, especially 
favored by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never 
forget the impression made on me by your brilliant appearance 
and your no less brilliant talk.” 

'‘’■Ah, I ces heaux jours! ce hon Louis Philippe^ ce cher 'petit 
JoinviUeV* sighed the Vicomte. 

“ But at that day you compared U hon Louis Philippe to 
Robert Macaire. You described all his sons, including, no 
doubt, ce cher petit Joinville^ in terms of resentful contempt, 
as so many plausible gamins whom Robert Macaire was train- 
ing to cheat the public in the interest of the family firm. I 
remember my father saying to you in answer, ‘No royal house 
in Europe . has more sought to develop the literature of an 
epoch, and to signalize its representatives by social respect 
and official honors, than that of the Orleans dynasty ; you, 
M. de Breze, do but imitate your elders in seeking to destroy 


148 


THE PARISIANS. 


the dynasty under which you flourish ; should you succeed, 
you hommes deplume will be the first sufferers and the loudest 
complainers.’ ” 

“ Cher Monsieur YaneJ' said the Vicomte, smiling com- 
placently, “ your father did me great honor in classing me 
with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and 
the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy, including our friend 
here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your father.” 

“ And,” said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened 
to Graham’s speech with an approving smile — “ and if I re- 
member right, my dear De Br4ze, no one was more brilliantly 
severe than yourself on poor De Lamartine and the Republic 
that succeeded Louis Philippe ; no one moi-e emphatically ex- 
pressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to restore 
order at home and renown abroad. Now you have got 
another Napoleon.” 

“ And I want change for my Napoleon,” said De Breze, 
laughing. 

“ My dear Vicomte,” said Graham, “ one thing we may all 
grant, that in culture and intellect you are far superior to the 
mass of your fellow-Parisians ; that you are therefore a favor- 
able type of their political character.” 

“ AA, mon cher^ vous etes trop airrmhleP 

“ And therefore I venture to say this : if the archangel 
Gabriel were permitted to descend to Paris and form the best 
government for France that the wisdom of seraph could de- 
vise, it would not be two years — I doubt if it would be six 
months — before out of this Paris, which you call the Foyer 
des IdeeSy would emerge a powerful party, adorned by your- 


THE PARISIANS. 


149 


self and other hommes de plume^ in favor of a revolution for 
the benefit of ce hon Satan and ce cher petit Beelzebub.” 

“ What a pretty vein of satire you have, mon cher /” said 
the Vicomte, good-humoredly ; “ there is a sting of truth in 
your witticism. Indeed, I must send you some articles of 
mine in which I have said much the same thing — Us beaux 
esprits se rencontrent. The fault of us French is impatience 
— desire of change ; but then it is that desire which keeps 
the world going and retains our place at the head of it. 
However, at this time we are all living too fast for our money 
to keep up with it, and too slow for our intellect not to flag. 
We vie with each other on the road to ruin, for in literature 
all the old paths to fame are shut up.” 

Here a tall gentleman, with whom the Vicomte had been 
conversing before he accosted Vane, and who had remained 
beside De Brez^ listening in silent attention to this colloquy, 
interposed, speaking in the slow voice of one accustomed to 
measure his words, and with a slight but unmistakable Ger- 
man accent — “ There is that, M. de Brez4, which makes one 
think gravely of what you say so lightly. Viewing things 
with the unprejudiced eyes of a foreigner, I recognize much 
for which France should be grateful to the Emperor. Under 
his sway her material resources have been marvelously aug- 
mented ; her commerce has been placed by the treaty with 
England on sounder foundations, and is daily exhibiting richer 
life ; her agriculture has made a prodigious advance wherever 
it has allowed room for capitalists and escaped from the curse 
of petty allotments and peasant-proprietors — a curse which 
would have ruined any country less blessed by Nature ; tur- 


150 


THE PARISIANS. 


bulent factions have been quelled ; internal order maintained ; 
the external prestige of France, up at least to the date of the 
Mexican war, increased to an extent that might satisfy even 
a Frenchman’s amour-propre ; and her advance in civilization 
has been manifested by the rapid creation of a naval power 
which should put even England on her mettle. But, on the 
other hand ” 

“ Ay, on the other hand,” said the Vicomte. 

“On the other hand there are in the Imperial system two 
causes of decay and of rot silently at work. They may not 
be the faults of the Emperor, but they are such misfortunes 
as may cause the fall of the Empire. The first is an absolute 
divorce between the political system and the intellectual cul- 
ture of the nation. The throne and the system rest on uni- 
versal suffrage — on a suffrage which gives to classes the most 
ignorant a power that preponderates over all the healthful ele- 
ments of knowledge. It is the tendency of all ignorant mul- 
titudes to personify themselves, as it were, in one individual. 
They cannot comprehend you when you argue for a principle ; 
they do comprehend you when you talk of a name. The 
Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and 
officials who infiuence their votes are paid for incorporating 
all principles in the shibboleth of that single name. You 
have thus sought the well-spring of a political system in the 
deepest stratum of popular ignorance. - To rid popular igno- 
rance of its normal revolutionary bias, the rural peasants are 
indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes from the fear 
which appertains to property. They have their roods of land 
or their shares in a national loan. Thus you estrange tho 


THE PARISIANS. 


151 


crassitude of an ignorant democracy still more from the intel- 
ligence of the educated classes by combining it with the most 
selfish and abject of all the apprehensions that are ascribed 
to aristocracy and wealth. What is thus imbedded in the 
depths of your society makes itself shown on the surface. 
Napoleon III. has been compared to Augustus ; and there are 
many startling similitudes between them in character and in 
fate. Each succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had 
contrived to unite autocracy with the popular cause. Each 
subdued all rival competitors, and inaugurated despotic rule 
in the name of freedom. Each mingled enough of sternness 
with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the commence- 
ment of his power ; but it would be an absurd injustice to 
fix the same degree of condemnation on the coup d'etat as 
humanity fixes on the earlier cruelties of Augustus. Each, 
once firm in his seat, became mild and clement : Augustus 
perhaps froni policy, Napoleon III. from a native kindliness 
of disposition which no fair critic of character can fail to ac- 
knowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one salient 
difference. Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how 
completely he succeeded in the task, to rally round him all 
the leading intellects in every grade and of every party — the 
followers of Antony, the friends of Brutus — every great 
captain, every great statesman, every great writer, every man 
who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian constellation 
and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of human 
intellect and genius. But this has not been the good fortune 
of your Emperor. The result of his system has been the 
suppression of intellect in every department. He has rallied 


152 


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round him not one great statesman ; his praises are hymned 
by not one great poet. The ceUbrites of a fonner day stand 
aloof, or, preferring exile to constrained allegiance, assail him 
with unremitting missiles from their asylum in foreign shores. 
His reign is sterile of new ctUhrites. The few that arise en- 
list themselves against him. Whenever he shall venture to 
give full freedom to the press and to the legislature, the in- 
tellect thus suppressed or thus hostile will burst forth in col- 
lected volume. His partisans have not been trained and dis- 
ciplined to meet such assailants. They will be as weak as no 
doubt they will be violent. And the worst is, that the intel- 
lect thus rising in mass against him will be warped and dis- 
torted, like captives who, being kept in chains, exercise their 
limbs, on escaping, in vehement jumps without definite ob- 
ject. The directors of emancipated opinion may thus be 
terrible enemies to the Imperial Government, but they will 
be very unsafe counselors to France. Concurrently with this 
divorce between the Imperial system and the national intellect 
— a divorce so complete that even your salons have lost their 
wit, and even your caricatures their point — a corruption of 
manners which the Empire, I own, did not originate, but in- 
herit, has become so common that every one owns and nobody 
blames it. The gorgeous ostentation of the Court has perverted 
the habits of the people. The intelligence obstructed from 
other vents betakes itself to speculating for a fortune; and 
the greed of gain and the passion for show are sapping the 
noblest elements of the old French manhood. Public opinion 
stamps with no opprobrium a minister or favorite who profits 
by a job; and I fear you will find that jobbing pervades all 
youi administrative departments.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


153 


“All very true,” said De Breze, with a shrug of the 
shoulders and in a tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the 
assertion he volunteered ; “ Virtue..^nd Honor, banished from 
courts and salons and the cabinets of authors, ascend to fairer 
heights in the attics of ouvriersy 

“The ouvriersj ouvriers of Paris !” cried this terrible Ger- 
man. 

“ Ay, Monsieur le Comte : what can you say against our 
ouvriers ? A German count cannot condescend to learn any- 
thing about ces petits gens.''' 

“ Monsieur,” replied the German, “ in the eyes of a states- 
man there are no petits gens, and in those of a philosopher no 
petites choses. We in Germany have too many difficult prob- 
lems affecting our working-classes to solve, not to have in- 
duced me to glean all the information I can as to the ouvriers 
of Paris. They have among them men of aspirations as 
noble as can animate the souls of philosophers and poets, 
perhaps not the less noble because common sense and experi- 
ence cannot follow their flight. But, as a body, the ouvriers 
of Paris have not been elevated in political morality by the 
benevolent aim of the Emperor to find them ample work and 
good wages independent of the natural laws that regulate the 
markets of labor. Accustomed thus to consider the State 
bound to maintain them, the moment the State fails in that 
impossible task they will accommodate their honesty to a rush 
upon property under the name of social reform. Have you 
not noticed how largely increased within the last few years is 
the number of those who cry out, ‘ La propriete, cest le voVf 
Have you considered the rapid growth of the Internatio.nal 

G* 


154 


THE PARISIANS. 


Association? I do not say that for all these evils the Empire 
is exclusively responsible. To a certain degree they are found 
in all rich communities, especially where democracy is more or 
less in the ascendant. To a certain extent they exist in the 
large towns of Germany ; they are conspicuously increasing 
in England ; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the 
United States of America; they are, I am told on good 
authority, making themselves visible with the spread of civil- 
ization in Russia. But under the French Empire they have 
become glaringly rampant ; and I venture to predict that the 
day is not far off when the rot at work throughout all layers 
and strata of French society will insure a fall of the fabric at 
the sound of which the world will ring. 

“ There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to 
throw out its leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind 
smites it, and then, and not till then, the trunk which seems 
so solid is found to be but the rind to a mass of crumbled 
powder.” • 

Monsieur le Comte,” said the Yicomte, “ you are a severe 
critic and a lugubrious prophet. But a German is so safe 
from revolution that he takes alarm at the stir of movement 
which is the normal state of the French esprit." 

“ French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian hetise. As 
to Germany being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a 
saying of Goethe’s — but has M. le Comte ever heard of 
(Joethe?” 

“ Goethe, of course — trls-joli icrivain." 

“ Goethe said to some one who was making much the same 
remark as yourself, ^ We Germans are in a state of revolution 


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155 


now, but we do things so slowly that it will be a hundred 
years before we Germans shall find it out. But when com- 
pleted, it will be the greatest revolution society has yet seen, 
and will last like the other revolutions that, beginning, scarce 
noticed, in Germany, have transformed the world.’ ’’ 

“ Diable^ M. le Comte ! Germans transformed the world ! 
What revolutions do you speak of?” 

“ The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, 
and the expansion of a monk’s quarrel with his Pope into the 
Lutheran revolution.” 

Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte to intro- 
duce him to Vane, which Be Breze did by the title of Count 
von Budesheim. On hearing Vane’s name, the Count inquired 
if he were related to the orator and statesman, George Gra- 
ham Vane, whose opinions uttered in Parliament were still 
authoritative among German thinkers. This compliment to 
his deceased father immensely gratified, but at the same time 
considerably surprised, the Englishman. His father, no doubt, 
had been a man of much influence in the British House of 
Commons — a very weighty speaker, and, while in oflace, a 
first-rate administrator ; but Englishmen know what a House 
of Commons reputation is — how fugitive, how little cosmo- 
politan ; and that a German count should ever have heard ot 
his father delighted, but amazed him. In stating himself to 
be the son of George Graham Vane, he intimated not only 
the delight, but the amaze, with the frank savoir-vivre which 
was one of his salient characteristics. 

“ Sir,” replied the German, speaking in very correct Eng- 
lish, but still with his national accent, “ every German reared 


156 


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to political service studies England as the school for practical 
thought distinct frona impracticable theories. Long may you 
allow us to do so ; only excuse me one remark : never let the 
selfish element of the practical supersede the generous element. 
Your father never did so in his speeches, and therefore we 
adm’red him. At the present day we don’t so much care 
to study English speeches. They may be insular, — they are 
not European. I honor England; Heaven grant that you 
may not be making sad mistakes in the belief that you can 
long remain England if you cease to be European.” Here- 
with the German bowed, not uncivilly — on the contrary, 
somewhat ceremoniously — and disappeared with a Prussian 
Secretary of Embassy, whose arm he linked in his own, into 
a room less frequented. 

“ Vicomte, who and what is your German count?” asked 
Vane. 

“ A solemn pedant,” answered the lively Vicomte — “ a 
German count-. Que mulez-vous de plus?" 


CHAPTER YII. 

A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone among the crowd. 
Attracted by the sound of music, he had strayed into one of 
the rooms whence it came, and in which, though his range 
of acquaintance at Paris was, for an Englishman, large and 
somewhat miscellaneous, he recognized no familiar counte- 
nance. A lady was playing the piano-forte — playing remark- 


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157 


ably well — with accurate science, with that equal lightness 
and strength of finger which produces brilliancy of execution. 
But to appreciate her music one should be musical one’s self. 
It wanted the charm that fascinates the uninitiated. The 
guests in the room were musical connoisseurs — a class with 
whom Graham Vane had nothing in common. Even if he 
had been more capable of enjoying the excellence of the 
player’s performance, the glance he directed towards her 
would have sufficed to chill him into indifierence. 8he was 
not young, and, with prominent features and puckered skin, 
was twisting her face into strange sentimental grimaces, as if 
terribly overcome by the beauty and pathos of her own melo- 
dies. To add to Vane’s displeasure, she was dressed in a 
costume wholly antagonistic to his views of the becoming — 
in a Greek jacket of gold and scarlet, contrasted by a Turkish 
turban. 

Muttering, “ What she-mountebank have we here ?” he sank 
Into a chair behind the door, and fell into an absorbed reverie. 
From this he was aroused by the cessation of the music, and 
the hum of subdued approbation by which it was followed. 
Above the hum swelled the imposing voice of M. Louvier, as 
he rose from a seat on the other side of the piano, by which 
his bulky form had been partially concealed. 

“ Bravo ! perfectly played — excellent ! Can we not persuade 
/our charming young countrywoman to gratify us even by a 
single song?” Then, turning aside and addressing some one 
else invisible to Graham, he said, “ Does that tyrannical doctor 
still compel you to silence. Mademoiselle ?” 

A voice, so sweetly modulated that if there were any sarcasm 


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in the words it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered, 
“ Nay, M. Louvier, he rather overtasks the words at my com- 
mand in thankfulness to those who, like yourself, so kindly 
regard me as something else than a singer.” 

It was not the she-mountebank who thus spoke. Graham 
rose and looked round with instinctive curiosity. He met the 
face that he said had haunted him. She too had risen, standing 
near the piano, with one hand tenderly resting on the she- 
mountebank’ s scarlet and gilded shoulder : — ^the face that 
haunted him, and yet with a difference. There was a faint 
blush on the clear pale cheek, a soft yet playful light in the 
grave dark-blue eyes, which had not been visible in the coun- 
tenance of the young lady in the pearl-colored robe. Graham 
did not hear Louvier’s reply, though no doubt it was loud 
enough for him to hear. He sank again into reverie. Other 
guests now came into the room, among them Frank Morley, 
styled Colonel (eminent military titles in the States do not 
always denote eminent military services), a wealthy American, 
and his sprightly and beautiful wife. The colonel was a clever 
man, rather stiff in his deportment and grave in speech, but 
by no means without a vein of dry humor. By the French 
he was esteemed a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand 
seigneur which democratic republics engender. He spoke 
French like a Parisian, had an imposing presence, and spent 
a great deal of money with the elegance of a man of taste and 
the generosity of a man of heart. His high breeding was not 
quite so well understood by the English, because the English 
are apt to judge breeding by little conventional rules not ob- 
served by the American colonel. He had a slight nasal twang, 


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159 


and introduced “sir” with redundant ceremony in addressing 
Englishmen, however intimate he might be with them, and 
had the habit (perhaps with a sly intention to startle or puzzle 
them) of adorning his style of conversation with quaint 
Americanisms. 

Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity 
of his character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentle- 
man by every Englishman, however conventional in tastes, 
who became admitted into his intimate acquaintance. 

Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, 
had no nasal twang, and employed no Americanisms in her 
talk, which was frank, lively, and at times eloquent. She 
had a great ambition to be esteemed of a masculine under- 
standing : Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in render- 
ing her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately 
acquainted with Colonel Morley, and with Mrs. Morley had 
contracted one of those cordial friendships which, perfectly 
free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic attachment, do 
sometimes spring up. between persons of opposite sexes without 
the slightest danger of changing its honest character into 
morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The Morleys 
stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three 
words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she 
darted towards it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the 
distance, and said, “ To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna 
is the loveliest girl in the present hee^ and full of mind, sir.” 

“ Singing mind,” said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill- 


* Bee, a common expression in “the West” fora meeting or gathering 
of people. 


160 


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natured impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to 
admire. 

“ I have not heard her sing,” replied the American, dryly ; 
“and the words ‘singing mind’ are doubtless accurately Eng- 
lish, since you employ them, but at Boston the collocation 
would be deemed barbarous. You fly off the handle. The 
epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive.” 

“ Boston would be in the right, my dear colonel. I stand 
rebuked ; mind has little to do with singing.” 

“I take leave to deny that, sir. You fire into the wrong 
flock, and would not hazard the remark if you had conversed, 
as I have, with Signorina Cicogna.” 

Before Graham could answer, Signorina Cicogna stood be- 
fore him, leaning lightly on Mrs. Morley’s arm. 

“Frank, you must take us into the refreshment-room,” said 
Mrs. Morley to her husband ; and then, turning to Graham, 
added, “ Will you help to make way for us ?” 

Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair speaker. 

“ No,” said she, taking her husband’s. “ Of course you 
know the Signorina, or, as we usually call her, Mademoiselle 
Cicogna. No? Allow me to present you — Mr. Graham Vane 
— Mademoiselle Cicogna. Mademoiselle speaks English like 
a native.” 

And thus abruptly Graham was introduced to the owner of 
the haunting face. He had lived too much in the great world 
all his life to retain the innate shyness of an Englishman, but 
he certainly was confused and embarrassed when his eyes met 
Isaura’s and he felt her hand on his arm. Before quitting 
the room she paused and looked back. Graham’s look fol- 


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161 


lowed tier own, and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet 
jacket escorted by some portly and decorated connoisseur. 
Isaura’s face brightened to another kind of brightness — a 
pleased and tender light. 

Poor dear MadreV^ she murmured to herself in Italian. 

“ Madre^^ echoed Graham, also in Italian. “ I have been 
misinformed, then: that lady is your mother?” 

Isaura laughed a pretty low silvery laugh, and replied in 
English, “ She is not my mother, but I call her Madre^ for I 
know no name more loving.” 

Graham was touched, and said gently, “ Your own mother 
was evidently very dear to you.” 

Isaura’s lip quivered, and she made a slight movement as 
if she would have withdrawn her hand from his arni. He 
saw that he had offended or wounded her, and, with the, 
straightforward frankness natural to him, resumed quickly — 

“ My remark was impertinent in a stranger ; forgive it.” 

“ There is nothing to forgive. Monsieur.” 

The two now threaded their way through the crowd, both 
silent. At last, Isaura, thinking she ought to speak first, in 
order to show that Graham- had not offended her, said— 

“ How lovely Mrs. Morley is !” 

“ Yes, and I like the spirit and ease of her American man- 
nci : have you known her long. Mademoiselle ?” 

“ No ; we met her for the first time some weeks ago at M 
Savarin’s.” 

“ Was she very eloquent on the rights of women ?” 

“ What ! you have heard her on that subject?” 

“ I have rarely heard her on any other, though she is the 
VOL. I. 11 


162 


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best and perhaps the cleverest friend I have at Paris ; but 
that may be my fault, for I like to start it. It is a relief to 
the languid small-talk of society to listen to any one thor- 
oughly in earnest upon turning the world topsy-turvy.” 

“ Do you suppose poor Mrs. Morley would seek to do that 
if she had her rights ?” asked Isaura, with her musical laugh. 

“ Not a doubt of it ; but perhaps you share her opinions.” 

‘‘ I scarcely know what her opinions are, but ” 

“Yes— but? ” 

“ There is a — what shall I call it ? — a persuasion — a senti- 
ment — out of which the opinions probably spring that I do 
share.” 

“ Indeed ? a persuasion, a sentiment, for instance, that a 
woman should have votes in the choice of legislators, and, I 
presume, in the task of legislation ?” 

“ No, that is not what I mean. Still, that is an opinion, 
right or wrong, which grows out of the sentiment I speak 
of” 

“ Pray explain the sentiment.” 

“ It is always so difficult to define a sentiment, but does it 
not strike you that in proportion as the tendency of modern 
civilization has been to raise women more and more to an in- 
tellectual equality with men — in proportion as they read and 
study and think — an uneasy sentiment, perhaps querulous, 
perhaps unreasonable, grows up within their minds that the 
conventions of the world are against the complete develop- 
ment of the faculties thus aroused and the ambition thus 
animated? — that they cannot but rebel, though it may be 
silently, against the notions of the former age, when women 


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163 


were not thus educated ; notions that the aim of the sex 
should be to steal through life unremarked, that it is a re- 
proach to be talked of, that women are plants to be kept in a 
hot-house and forbidden the frank liberty of growth in the 
natural air and sunshine of heaven ? This, at least, is a senti- 
ment which has sprung up within myself, and I imagine that 
it is the sentiment which has given birth to many of the 
Opinions or doctrines that seem absurd, and very likely are so, 
to the general public. I don’t pretend even to have considered 
those doctrines. I don’t pretend to say what may be the 
remedies for the restlessness and uneasiness I feel. I doubt 
if on this earth there be any remedies. All I know is, that 
I feel restless and uneasy.” 

Graham gazed on her countenance, as she spoke, with an 
astonishment not unmingled with tenderness and compassion 
— astonishment at the contrast between a vein of reflection 
so hardy, expressed in a style of language that seemed to him 
so masculine, and the soft velvet dreamy eyes, the gentle tones, 
and delicate purity of hues rendered younger still by the 
blush that deepened their bloom. 

At this moment they had entered the refreshment-room ; 
but a dense group being round the table, and both perhaps 
forgetting the object for which Mrs. Morley had introduced 
them to each other, they had mechanically seated themselves 
on an ottoman in a recess while Isaura'was yet speaking. It 
must seem as strange to the reader as it did to Graham that 
such a speech should have been spoken by so young a girl to 
an acquaintance so new. But in truth Isaura was very little 
conscious of Graham’s presence. She had get on a subject 


164 


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that perplexed and tormented her solitary thoughts — she was 
but thinking aloud. 

“I believe,” said Graham, after a pause, “that I compre- 
hend your sentiment much better than I do Mrs. Morley’s 
opinions ; but permit me one observation. You say, truly, 
that the course of modern civilization has more or less affected 
the relative position of woman cultivated beyond that level 
on which she Was formerly contented to stand — the nearer 
perhaps to the heart of man because not lifting her head to 
his height; — and hence a sense of restlessness, uneasiness. 
But do you suppose that, in this whirl and dance of the atoms 
which compose the rolling ball of the civilized world, it is 
only women that are made restless and uneasy ?' Do you not 
see, amid the masses congregated in the wealthiest cities of 
the world, writhings and struggles against the received order 
of things ? In this sentiment of discontent there is a certain 
truthfulness, because it is an element of human nature ; and 
how best to deal with it is a problem yet unsolved. But in 
the opinions and doctrines to which, among the masses, the 
sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of the wisest detects only 
the certainty of a common ruin, offering for reconstruction 
the same building-materials as the former edifice — materials 
not likely to be improved because they may be defaced. 
Ascend from the working-classes to all others in which civil- 
ized culture prevails, and you will find that same restless feel- 
ing — the fluttering of untried wings against the bars between 
wider space and their longings. Could you poll all the edu- 
cated ambitious young men in England — perhaps in Europe 
— at least half of them, divided between a reverence for the 


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165 


past and a curiosity as to the future, would sigh, ‘ I am born 
a century too late or a century too soon 1’ ” 

Isaura listened to this answer with a profound and absorb- 
ing interest. It was the first time that a clever young man 
talked thus sympathetically to her, a clever young girl. 

Then, rising, he said, “ I see your Madre and our American 
friends are darting angry looks at me. They have made room 
for us at the table, and are wondering why I should keep you 
thus from the good things of this little life. One word more 
ere we join them: Consult your own mind, and consider 
whether your uneasiness and unrest are caused solely by con- 
ventional shackles on your sex. Are they not equally com- 
mon to the youth of ours? — common to all who seek in art, 
in letters, nay, in the stormier field of active life, to clasp as 
a reality some image yet seen but as a dream ?” ^ 


CHAPTEK YIII. 

No further conversation in the way of sustained dialogue 
took place that evening between (Jraham and Isaura. 

The Americans and the Savarins clustered around Isaura 
when they quitted the refreshment-room. The party was break- 
ing up. Vane would have offered his arm again to Isaura, 
but M. Savarin had forestalled him. The American was dis- 
patched by his wife to see for the carriage ; and Mrs. Morley 
said, with her wonted sprightly tone of command— 


THE PARISIANS. 


m 


‘‘Now, Mr. Vane, you have no option but to take care of 
me to the shawl-room.” 

Madame Savarin and Signora Yenosta had each found 
their cavaliers, the Italian still retaining hold of the portly, 
connoisseur, and the Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard 
of the Vicomte de Breze. As they descended the stairs, Mrs. 
Morley asked Graham what he thought of the young lady to 
whom she had presented him. 

“ I think she is charming,” answered Graham. 

“ Of course ; that is the stereotyped answer to all such 
questions, especially by you Englishmen. In public or in 
private, England is the mouthpiece of platitudes.” 

“ It is natural for an American to think so. Every child 
that has just learned to speak uses bolder expressions than its 
grandmamma ; but I am rather at a loss to know by what 
novelty of phrase an American would have answered your 
question.” 

“ An American would have discovered that Isaura Cicogna 
had a soul, and his answer would have confessed it.” 

“ It strikes me that he would then have uttered a platitude 
more stolid than mine. Every Christian knows that the 
dullest human being has a soul. But, to speak frankly, I 
grant that my answer did not do justice to the Signorina, nor 
to the impression she makes on me ; and, putting aside the 
charm of the face, there is a charm in a mind that seems to 
have gathered stores of reflection which I should scarcely 
have expected to find in a young lady brought up to be a pro- 
fessional singer.” 

“ You add prejudice to platitude, and are horribly prosaic 


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167 


to-night ; but here we are in the shawl-room. I must cake 
another opportunity of attacking you. Pray dine with us 
to-morrow ; you will meet our Minister and a few other pleas- 
ant friends.” 

“ I suppose I must not say, ‘ I shall be charmed,’ ” answered 
Vane ; “ but I shall be.” 

Dieu! that horrid fat man has deserted Signora 
Veuosta — looking for his own cloak, I daresay — selfish mon- 
ster ! Go and hand her to her carriage — quick, it is an- 
nounced 1” 

Graham, thus ordered, hastened to offer his arm to the she- 
mountebank. Somehow she had acquired dignity in his eyes, 
and he did not feel the least ashamed of being in contact with 
the scarlet jacket. 

The Signora grappled to him with a confiding familiarity. 

“I am afraid,” she said in Italian, as they passed along the 
spacious hall to the 'porte-cocJiere — “ I am afraid that I did 
not make a good efiect to-night. I was nervous ; did not you 
perceive it ?” 

“No, indeed; you enchanted us all,” replied the dissimu- 
lator. 

“ How amiable you are to say so ! — ^you must think that I 
sought for a compliment. So I did — ^you gave me more than 
I deserved. Wine is the milk of old men, and praise of old 
women. But an old man may be killed by too much wine, 
and an old woman lives all the longer for too much praise — 
buona notte.” 

Here she sprang, lithesomely enough, into the carriage, 
and Isaura followed, escorted by M. Savarin. As the two 


168 


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men returned towards the shawl-room, the Frenchman said, 
“ Madame Savarin and I complain that you have not let us 
see so much of you as we ought. No doubt you are greatly 
sought after 5 but are you free to take your soup with us the 
day after to-mori;ow? You will meet a select few of my 
confreres^ 

“ The day after to-morrow I will mark with a white stone. 
To dine with M. Savarin is an event to a man who covets dis- 
tinction.” 

“ Such compliments reconcile an author to his trade. You 
deserve the best return I can make you. You will meet 
la helle Isaura. I have just engaged her and her chaperoii. 
She is a girl of true genius ; and genius is like those objects 
of vertu which belong to a former age, and become every day 
more scarce and more precious.” 

Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his wife hurry- 
ing to their carriage. The American stopped Vane, and 
whispered, “ I am glad, sir, to hear from my wife that you 
dine with us to-morrow. Sir, you will meet Mademoiselle 
Cicogna, and I am not without a kinkle* that you will be 
enthused.” 

“ This seems like a fatality,” soliloquized Vane as he walked 
through the deserted streets towards his lodging. “ I strove 
to banish that haunting face from my mind. I had half for- 
gotten it ; and now ” Here his murmur sank into silence. 

He was deliberating in very conflicting thought whether or 
not he should write to refuse the two invitations he had 
accepted. 


* A notion. 


THE PARISIANS. 


169 


“Pooli!” he said at last, as he reached the door of his 
lodging, “ is my reason so weak that it should be influenced 
by a mere superstition ? Surely I know myself too well and 
have tried myself too long to fear that I should be untrue to 
the duty and ends of my life, even if I found my heart in 
danger of suffering.” 

Certainly the Fates do seem to mock our resolves to keep 
our feet from their ambush and our hearts from their snare. 

How our lives may be colored by that which seems to us 
the most trivial accident, the merest chance ! Suppose that 
Alain de Kochebriant had been invited to that reunion at M. 
Louvier’s, and Graham Var : had accepted some other invita- 
tion and passed his evening elsewhere, Alain would probably 
have been presented to Isaura — what then might have hap- 
pened ? The impression Isaura had already made upon the 
young Frenchman was not so deep as that made upon Gra- 
ham ; but then Alain’s resolution to efface it was but com- 
menced that day, and by no means yet confirmed. And if he 
had been the flrst clever young man to talk earnestly to that 
clever young girl, who can guess what impression he might 
have made upon her ? His conversation might have had less 
philosophy and strong sense than Graham’s, but more of 
poetic sentiment and fascinating romance. 

However, the history of events that do not come to pass is 
not in the chronicle of the Fates. 


VoL. I. — H 


eooik: III. 


CHAPTER 1. 

The next day the guests at the Morleys’ had assembled 
when Vane entered. His apology for unpunctuality was cut 
short by the lively hostess : “ Your pardon is granted without 
the humiliation of asking for it ; we know that the character- 
istic of the English is always to be a little behindhand.” 

She then proceeded to introduce him to the American Min- 
ister, to a distinguished American poet, with a countenance 
striking for mingled sweetness and power, and one or two 
other of her countrymen sojourning at Paris ; and this cere- 
mony over, dinner was announced, and she bade Graham offer 
his arm to Mademoiselle Cicogna. 

“ Have you ever visited the United States, Mademoiselle?” 
asked Vane, as they seated themselves at the table. 

“No.” 

“ It is a voyage you are sure to make soon.” • 

“Why so?” 

“ Because report says you will create a great sensation at 
the very commencement of your career; and the New World 
is ever eager to welcome each celebrity that is achieved in the 
Old ; more especially that which belongs to your enchanting 
art.” 


170 


THE PARISIANS. 


171 


“ True, sir,” said an American senator, solemnly striking 
into the conversation ; “we are an appreciative people ; and 
if that lady be as fine a singer as I am told, she might com- 
mand any amount of dollars.” 

Isaura colored, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low 
voice if he were fond of music. 

“ I ought of course to say ‘ yes,’ ” answered Graham in the 
same tone ; “ but I doubt if that ‘yes’ would be an honest one. 
In some moods, music — if a kind of music I like — affects me 
very deeply ; in other moods, not at all. And I cannot bear 
much at a time. A concert wearies me shamefully ; even an 
opera always seems to me a great deal too long. But I ought 
to add that I am no judge of music ; that music was never 
admitted into my education ; and, between ourselves, I doubt if 
there be one Englishman in five hundred who would care for 
opera or concert if it were not the fashion to say he did. 
Does my frankness revolt you?” 

“ On the contrary — I sometimes doubt, especially of late, 
if I am fond of music myself.” 

“ Signorina — pardon me — it is impossible that you should 
not be. Genius can never be untrue to itself, and must love 
that in which it excels — that by which it communicates joy, 
and,” he added, with a half-suppressed sigh, “ attains to 
glory.” 

“ Genius is a divine word, and not to be applied to a singer,” 
said Isaura, with a humility in which there was an earnest 
sadness. 

Graham was touched and startled ; but before he could an- 
swer, the American Minister appealed to him across the table, 


172 


THE PARISIANS. 


asking if he had quoted accurately a passage in a speech by 
Grraham’s distinguished father, in regard to the share which 
England ought to take in the political affairs of Europe. 

The conversation now became general ; very political and 
very serious. Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated 
and eloquent. 

Isaura listened to him with admiration. She was struck 
by what seemed to her a nobleness of sentiment which ele- 
vated his theme above the level of commonplace polemics. 
She was pleased to notice, in the attentive silence of his in- 
telligent listeners, that they shared the effect produced on her- 
self. In fact, Graham Yane was a born orator, and his studies 
had been those of a political thinker. In common talk he 
was but the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank 
and genial, with a touch of good-natured sarcasm. But when 
the subject started drew him upward to those heights in 
which politics become the science of humanity, he seemed a 
changed being. His cheek glowed, his eye brightened, his 
voice mellowed into richer tones, his language became uncon- 
sciously adorned. In such moments there might scarcely be 
an audience, even differing from him in opinion, which would 
not have acknowledged his spell. 

When the party adjourned to the sdlon^ Isaura said softly 
to Graham, “ I understand why you did not cultivate music ; 
and I think, too, that I can now understand what effects the 
human voice can produce on human minds, without recurring 
to the art of song.” 

“ Ah,” said Graham, with a pleased smile, “ do not make 
me ashamed of my former rudeness by the revenge of com- 


THE PARISIANS. 


173 


pliment, and, above all, do not disparage your own art by sup- 
posing that any prose effect of voice in its utterance of mind 
can interpret that which music alone can express, even to 
listeners so uncultivated as myself. Am I not told truly by 
musical composers, when I ask them to explain in words what 
they say in their music, that such explanation is impossible, 
that music has a language of its own, untranslatable by words ?” 

“ Yes,” said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening 
eyes, “ you are told truly. It was only the other day that I was 
pondering over that truth.” 

“ But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this un- 
translatable language penetrates and brightens up I How in- 
complete the grand nature of man — though man the grandest 
-^would be, if you struck out of his reason the comprehen- 
sion of poetry, music, and religion ! In each are reached 
and are sounded deeps in his reason otherwise concealed from 
himself. History, knowledge, science, stop at the point in 
which mystery begins. There they meet with the world of 
shadow. Not an inch of that world can they penetrate with- 
out the aid of poetry and religion, two necessities of intellec- 
tual man much more nearly allied than the votaries of the 
practical and the positive suppose. To the aid and elevation 
of both those necessities comes in music, and there has never 
existed a religion in the world which has not demanded music 
as its ally. If, as I said frankly, it is only in certain moods 
of my mind that I enjoy music, it is only because in certain 
moods of my mind I am capable of quitting the guidance of 
prosaic reason for the world of shadow ; that I am so suscepti 
ble as at every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be to 


174 


THE PARISIANS. 


the mysterious influences of poetry and religion. Do you 
understand what I wish to express ?” 

“ Yes, I do, and clearly.” 

“ Then, Signorina, you are forbidden to undervalue the gift 
of song. You must feel its power over the heart, when you 
enter the opera-house ; over the soul, when you kneel in a 
cathedral.” 

“ Oh,” cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich glow mantling 
over her lovely face, “ how I thank you ! Is it you who say 
you do not love music ? How much better you understand 
it than I did till this moment !” 

Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American poet, came to 
the corner in which the Englishman and the singer had niched 
themselves. The poet began to talk, the other guests gathered 
round, and every one listened reverentially till the party broke 
up. Colonel Morley handed Isaura to her carriage — ^the she- 
mountebank again fell to the lot of Graham. 

“ Signor,” said she, as he respectfully placed her shawl 
round her scarlet-and-gilt jacket, “ are we so far from Paris 
that you cannot spare the time to call ? My child does not 
sing in public, but at home you can hear her. It is not every 
woman’s voice that is sweetest at home.” 

Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow; 

Isaura mused in silent delight over the words which had 
so extolled the art of the singer. Alas, poor child ! she could 
not guess that in those words, reconciling her to the profession 
of the stage, the speaker was pleading against his own heart. 

There was in Graham’s nature, as I think it commonly is 
in that of most true orators, a wonderful degree of intellectual 


THE PARISIANS. 


175 


conscience^ which impelled him to acknowledge the benignant 
influences of song, and to set before the young singer the 
noblest incentives to the profession to which he deemed her 
assuredly destined. But in so doing he must have felt that 
he was widening the gulf between her life and his own ; per- 
haps he wished to widen it in proportion as he dreaded to 
listen to any voice in his heart which asked if the gulf might 
not be overleaped. 


CHAPTEB 11. 

On the morrow Graham called at the villa at A . The 

two ladies received him in Isaura’s chosen sitting-room. 

Somehow or other, conversation at first languished. Graham 
was reserved and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed. 

The Venosta had the frais of making talk to herself. 
Probably at another time Graham would have been amused 
and interested in the observation of a character new to him, 
and thoroughly southern — lovable not more from its naive 
simplicity of kindliness than from various little foibles and 
vanitios, all of which were harmless, and some of them en- 
dearing as those of a child whom it is easy to make happy 
and whom it seems so cruel to pain ; and with all the Venosta’ s 
deviations from the polished and tranquil good taste of the 
heau monde^ she had that indescribable grace which rarely 
deserts a Florentine, so that you might call her odd, but not 
vulgar ; while, though uneducated, except in the way of her 


176 


THE PARISIANS. 


old profession, and never having troubled herself to read any- 
thing but a lihrettOj and the pious books commended to her 
by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every now and 
then flashed out with a quaint humor, lighting up terse frag- 
ments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously 
imbedded themselves in the ground-work of her mind. 

But Graham was not at this time disposed to judge the poor 
Veiiosta kindly or fairly. Isaura had taken high rank in his 
thoughts. He felt an impatient resentment, mingled with 
anxiety and compassionate tenderness, at a companionship 
which seemed to him derogatory to the position he would 
have assigned to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide 
amidst the perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, 
and the destined profession of Isaura were exposed! Like 
most Englishmen — especially Englishmen wise in the knowl- 
edge of life — ^lie held in fastidious regard the proprieties and 
conventions by which the dignity of woman is fenced round ; 
and of those proprieties and conventions the Venosta naturally 
appeared to him a very unsatisfactory guardian and repre- 
sentative. 

Happily unconscious of those hostile prepossessions, the 
elder Signora chatted on very gayly to the visitor. She was 
in excellent spirits. People had been very civil to her both at 
Colonel Morley’s and M. Louvier’s. The American Minister 
had praised the scarlet jacket. She was convinced she had 
made a sensation two niglits running. When the amour- 
'propre is pleased, the tongue is freed. 

The Yenosta ran on in praise of Paris and the Parisians, 
of Louvier and his soiree and the pistachio ice, of the Amer- 


THE PARISIANS. 


177 


icans and a certain creme de maraschino which she hoped the 
Signor Inglese had not failed to taste — the creme de maraschino 
led her thoughts back to Italy. Then she grew mournful — ■ 
how she missed the native heau del ! Paris was pleasant, but 
how absurd to call it Paradis des Femmes^^ — as if les 
Femmes could find Paradise in a hrouiUardl 

“ But,” she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticu- 
lation, “ the Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk. He 
is engaged to come that he may hear the nightingale sing. 
A drop of honey attracts the fly more than a bottle of vinegar.” 

Graham could not help smiling at this adage. “ I sub- 
mit,” said he, “ to your comparison as regards myself ; but 
certainly anything less like a bottle of vinegar than your 
amiable conversation I cannot well conceive. However, the 
metaphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask Mademoiselle 
to sing after the confession I made to her last night.” 

“ What confession ?” asked the Yenosta. 

“ That I know nothing of music, and doubt if I can honestly 
say that I am fond of it.” 

“ Not fond of music I Impossible ! You slander yourself. 
He who loves not music would have a dull time of it in heaven. 
But you are English, and perhaps have only heard the music 
of your own country. Bad, very bad — a heretic’s music I 
Now listen.” 

Seating herself at the piano, she began an air from the 
“ LudaJ^ crying out to Isaura to come and sing to her accom- 
paniment. 

“ Ho you really wish it?” asked Isaura of Graham, fixing 
on him questioning timid eyes. 

H* 12 


178 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ I cannot say how much I wish to hear you.” 

Isaura moved to the instrument, and Grraham stood behind 
her. Perhaps he felt that he should judge more impartially 
of her voice if not subjected to the charm of her face. 

But the first note of the voice held him spell-bound : in 
itself, the organ was of the rarest order, mellow and rich, but 
so soft that its power was lost in its sweetness, and so ex- 
quisitely fresh in every note. 

But the singer’s charm was less in voice than in feeling — 
she conveyed to the listener so much more than was said by 
the words, or even implied by the music. Her song in this 
caught the art of the painter who impresses the mind with 
the consciousness of a something which the eye cannot detect 
on the canvas. 

She seemed f-o breathe out from the depths of her heart 
the intense pathos of the original romance, so far exceeding 
that of the opera — the human tenderness, the mystic terror 
of a tragic love-tale more solemn in its sweetness than that of 
Verona. 

When her voice died away, no applause came — not even a 
murmur. Isaura bashfully turned round to steal a glance at 
her silent listener, and beheld moistened eyes and quivering 
lips. At that moment she was reconciled to her art. G-raham 
rose abruptly and walked to the window. 

“ Do you doubt now if you are fond -of music?” cried the 
Venosta. 

“This is mpre than music,” answered Graham, stilly with 
averted face. Then, after a short pause, he approached 
Isaura, and said, with a melancholy half-smile — 


THE PARISIANS. 


179 


“ 1 do not think, Mademoiselle, that I could dare to hear 
you often ; it would take me too far from the hard real world ; 
and he who would not be left behindhand on the road that 
he must journey cannot indulge frequent excursions into 
fairy-land.” 

“ Yet,” said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder, “ I was told in 
my childhood, by one whose genius gives authority to her 
words, that beside the real world lies the ideal. The real 
world then seemed rough to me. ‘ Escape,’ said my coun- 
selor, ‘ is granted from that stony thoroughfare into the fields 
beyond its fornaal hedgerows. The ideal world has its sor- 
rows, but it never admits despair.’ That counsel then, me- 
thought, decided my choice of life. I know not now if it 
has done so.” 

“ Fate,” answered Graham, slowly and thoughtfully — “ Fate, 
which is not the ruler but the servant of Providence, decides 
our choice of life, and rarely from outward circumstances. 
Usually the motive power is within. We apply the word 
genius to the minds of the gifted few ; but in all of us there 
is a genius that is inborn, a pervading something which dis- 
tinguishes our very identity, and dictates to the conscience 
that which we are best fitted to do and to be. In so dictating 
it compels our choice of life ; or if we resist the dictate, we 
find at the close that we have gone astray. My choice of life 
thus compelled is on the stony thoroughfares — ^yours in the 
green fields.” 

As he thus said, his face became clouded and mournful. 

The Venosta, quickly tired of a conversation in which she 
had no part, and having various little household matters to 


180 


THE PARISIANS. 


attend to, had during this dialogue slipped unobserved from 
the room ; yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the sudden con- 
sciousness that they were alone which belong to lovers. 

Why,” asked Isaura, with that magic smile reflected in 
countless dimples which, even when her words were those of 
a man’s reasoning, made them seem gentle with a woman’s 
sentiment — “ why must your road through the world be so 
exclusively the stony one ? It is not from necessity — ^it can- 
not be from taste. And whatever definition you give to 
genius, surcl) it is not your own inborn genius that dictates 
to you a constant exclusive adherence to the commonplace of 
life.” 

“Ah, Mademoiselle, do not misrepresent me. I did not 
say that 1 could not sometimes quit the real world for fairy- 
land — I said that I c6uld not do so often. My vocation is 
not that of a poet or artist.”, . 

“ It is that of an orator, I knpw,” said Isaura, kindling ; — 
“ so they tell me, and I believe them. But is not the orator 
somewhat akin to the poet? Is not oratory an art?” 

“Let us dismiss the word orator: as applied to English 
public life, it is a very deceptive expression. The English- 
man who wishes to influence his countrymen by force of words 
spoken must mix with them in their beaten thoroughfares — ■ 
must make himself master of their practical views and inter- 
ests — must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and 
business — must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspira- 
tions to their material welfare — must avoid, as the fault most 
• dangerous to himself and to others, that kind of eloquence 
which is called oratory in France, and which has helped 


THE PARISIANS. 


181 


make tlie French the worst politicians in Europe. Alas, 
Mademoiselle, I fear that an English statesman would appear 
to you a very dull orator.” 

“ I s^ that I spoke foolishly — ^yes, you show me that the 
world of the statesman lies apart from that of the artist. 
Yet 

“ Yet what ?” 

“ May not the ambition of both be the same?” 

“'How so?” 

To refine the rude, to exalt the mean — to identify their 
own fame with some new beauty, some new glory, added to 
the treasure-house of all.” 

Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with 
the flush of enthusiasm on his cheek and brow. 

^‘Oh, Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, “ what a sure guide 
and what a noble inspirer to a true Englishman’s ambition 
nature has fitted you to be, were it not — — ” He paused 
abruptly. 

This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. She had 
been accustomed to the language of compliment till it had 
begun to pall, but a compliment of this kind was the first 
that had ever reached her ear. She had no words in answer 
io it ; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart, as if to 
till its beatings. But the unfinished exclamation, “ Were it 
iiot,” troubled her more than the preceding words had flat- 
tered — and mechanically she murmured, “Were it not — 
what?” 

“ Oh,” answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, “ I felt 
too ashamed of my selfishness as man to finish my sentence.” 


182 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Do SO, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might 
wound me as woman.” 

“ Not so — on the contrary ; had I gone on it would have 
been to say that a woman of your genius, and more especially 
of such mastery in the most popular and fascinating of all 
arts, could not be contented if she inspired nobler thoughts 
in a single breast — she must belong to the public, or rather 
the public must belong to her : it is but a corner of her heart 
that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must 
merge his existence in hers — must be contented to reflect a 
ray of the light she sheds on admiring thousands. Who 
could dare to say to you, ‘ Renounce your career — confine 
your genius, your art, to the petty circle of home’ ? To an 
actress — a singer — with whose fame the world rings, home 
would be a prison. Pardon me, pardon ” 

Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would 
force their way, but she held out her hand to him with a child- 
like frankness, and said softly, “ I am not offended.” Graham 
did not trust himself to continue the same strain of conversa- 
tion. Breaking into a new subject, he said, after a constrained 
pause, “ Will you think it very impertinent in so new an ac- 
quaintance if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our 
language as a native ? and is it by Italian teachers that you 
have been trained to think and to feel ?” 

“ Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did 
not speak any other language with comfort to himself. He 
was very fond of me — ^and had he been really my father I 
could not have loved him more : we were constant companions 
till— till I lost him.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


183 


“ And no mother left to console you.” Isaura shook her 
head mournfully, and the Yenosta here re-entered. 

Graham felt conscious that he had already stayed too long, 
and took leave. 

^ They knew that they were to meet that evening at the 
Savarins’. 

Graham did not feel unmixed pleasure at that thought : the 
more he knew of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that 
he had allowed himself to know her at all. 

But after he had left, Isaura sang low to herself the song 
which had so affected her listener ; then she fell into abstracted 
reverie, but she felt a strange and new sort of happiness. In 
dressing for M. Savarin’s dinner, and twining the classic ivy- 
wreath into her dark locks, her Italian servant exclaimed, 
“ How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night 1” 


CHAPTEB III. 

M. Savarin was one of the most brilliant of that galaxy 
of literary men which shed lustre on the reign of Louis 
Philippe. 

His was an intellect peculiarly French in its lightness and 
grace. Neither England nor Germany nor America has pro- 
duced any resemblance to it. Ireland has, in Thomas Moore; 
but then in Irish genius there is so much that is French. 

M. Savarin was free from the ostentatious extravagance 
which had come into vogue with the Empire. His house and 


184 


THE PARISIANS. 


establishment were modestly maintained within the limit of an 
income chiefly, perhaps entirely, derived from literary profits.- 

Though he gave frequent dinners, it was but to few at a 
time, and without show or pretense. Yet the dinners, though 
simple, were perfect of their kind ; and the host so contrived 
to infuse his own playful gayety into the temper of his guests 
that the feasts at his house were considered the pleasantest at 
Paris. On this occasion the party extended to ten, the largest 
number his table admitted. • 

All the French guests belonged to the Liberal party, though 
in changing tints of the tricolor. Place aux dames^ first to 
be named were the Countess de Craon and Madame Vertot — 
both without husbands. The Countess had buried the Count. 
Madame Vertot had separated from Monsieur. The Countess 
was very handsome, but she was sixty. Madame Vertot was 
twenty years younger, but she was very plain. She had 
quarreled with the distinguished author for whose sake she 
had separated from Monsieur, and no man had since presumed 
to think that he could console a lady so plain for the loss of 
an author so distinguished. 

Both these ladies were very clever. The Countess had 
written lyrical poems entitled ‘‘ Cries of Liberty,” and a drama 
of which Danton was the hero, and the moral too revolutionary 
for admission to the stage ; but at heart the Countess was not 
at all a revolutionist — the last person in the world to do or 
desire anything that could bring a washerwoman an inch 
nearer to a countess. She was one of those persons who play 
with fire in order to appear enlightened. 

Madame Vertot was of severer mould. She had knelt at 


THE PARISIANS. 


185 


the feet of M. Thiers, and went into the historico-political lino. 
She had written a remarkable book upon the modern Carthage 
(meaning England), and more recently a work that had ex- 
cited much attention upon the Balance of Power, in which 
she proved it to be the interest of civilization and the necessity 
of Europe that Belgium should be added to France, and Prussia 
circumscribed to the bounds of its original margravate. She 
showed how easily these two objects could have been effected 
by a constitutional monarch instead of an egotistical Emperor. 
Madame Yertot was a decided Orleanist. 

Both these ladies condescended to put aside authorship in 
general society. Next among our guests let me place the 
Count de Passy and Madame son epovse : the Count was 
seventy-one, and, it is needless to add, a type of Frenchman 
rapidly vanishing, and not likely to find itself renewed. How 
shall I describe him so as to make my English reader under- 
stand ?. Let me try by analogy. Suppose a man of great birth 
and fortune, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic friend 
of Lord Byron and a jocund companion of Greorge IV. — who 
had in him an immense degi'ee of lofty romantic sentiment 
with an equal degree of well-bred worldly cynicism, but who 
on, account of that admixture, which is rare, kept a high rank 
in either of the two societies into which, speaking broadly, 
civilized life divides itself — the romantic and the cynical. The 
Count de Passy had been the most ardent among the young 
disciples of Chateaubriand — the most brilliant among the 
young courtiers of Charles X. Need I add that he had been 
a terrible lady-killer ? 

But in spite of his admiration of Cha eaubriand and hia 


186 


THE PARISIANS. 


allegiance to Charles X., the Count had been always true to 
those caprices of the French noblesse from which he descended 
— caprices which destroyed them in the old Revolution — ca- 
prices belonging to the splendid ignorance of their nation in 
general, and their order in particular. Speaking without re- 
gard to partial exceptions, the French gentilhomme is essentially 
a Parisian ; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the im- 
pulse or fashion of the moment. It is d la mode for the 
moment to be Liberal or anti-Liberal ? Parisians embrace 
and kiss each other) and swear through life and death to 
adhere forever to the mode of the moment. The Three Days 
were the mode of the moment — the Count de Passy became 
an enthusiastic Orleanist. Louis Philippe was very gracious 
to him. He was decorated — ^he was named pr6fet of his de- 
partment — he was created senator — he was about to be sent 
Minister to a GTerman Court when Louis Philippe fell. The 
Republic was proclaimed. The Count caught the popular 
contagion, and, after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots 
whom a week before he hud called canaille^ he swore eternal 
fidelity to the Republic. The fashion of the moment suddenly 
became Napoleonic, and with the coup d^itat the Republic 
was metamorphosed into an Empire. The Count wept on 
the bosoms of all the Vieilles Moustaches he could find, and 
rejoiced that the sun of Austerlitz had re-arisen. But after 
the affair of Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly. 
Imperialism was fast going out of fashion. The Count trans- 
ferred his affection to Jules Favre, and joined the ranks of 
the advanced Liberals. During all these political changes 
the Count had remained very much the same man in private 


THE PARISIANS. 


187 


life ; agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above all, a devotee 
of the fair sex. When he had reached the age of sixty -eight 
he was still fort hel homme — unmarried, with a grand presence 
and charming manner. At that age he said, “ Je rue range f 
and married a young lady of eighteen. She adored her hus- 
band, and was wildly jealous of him ; while the Count did not 
seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her adoration with 
a gentle shrug of the shoulders. 

The three other guests who, with Craham and the two 
Italian ladies, made up the complement of ten, were the Ger- 
man Count von Rudesheim, whom Vane had met at M. Lou- 
vier’s, a celebrated French physician named Bacourt, and a 
young author whom Savarin had admitted into his clique and 
declared to be of rare promise. This author, whose real name 
was Gustave Rameau, but who, to prove, I suppose, the sin- 
cerity of that scorn for ancestry which he professed, published 
his verses under the patrician designation of Alphonse de 
Valcour, was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the 
first glance for. younger ; but, looking at him closely, the signs 
of old age were already stamped on his visage. 

He was undersized, and of a feeble, slender frame. In the 
eyes of women and artists the defects of his frame were 
redeemed by the extraordinary beauty of the face. His 
black hair, carefully parted in the centre, and worn long and 
flowing, contrasted the whiteness of a high though narrow 
forehead, and the delicate pallor of his cheeks. His features 
were very regular, his eyes singularly bright ; but the expres- 
sion of the face spoke of fatigue and exhaustion — ^the silky 
locks Wire already thin, and interspersed with threads of silver 


188 


THE PARISIANS. 


—the bright eyes shone out from sunken orbits — the lines 
round the mouth were marked as they are in the middle age 
of one who has lived too fast. 

It was a countenance that might have excited a compas- 
sionate and tender interest, but for something arrogant and 
supercilious in the expression — something that demanded not 
tender pity but enthusiastic admiration. Yet that expression 
was displeasing rather to men than to women ; and one could 
well conceive that among the latter the enthusiastic admira- 
tion it challenged would be largely conceded. 

The conversation at dinner was in complete contrast to that 
at the American’s the day before. There the talk, though 
animated, had been chiefly earnest and serious — ^here it was 
all touch and go, sally and repartee. The subjects were the 
light on-diU and lively anecdotes of the day, not free from 
literature and politics, but both treated as matters of persiflage^ 
hovered round with a jest, and quitted with an epigram. 
The two French lady authors, the Count de Passy, the physi- 
cian, and the host, far outshone all the other guests. Now 
and then, however, the German Count struck in with an 
ironical remark condensing a great deal of grave wisdom, and 
the young author with ruder and more biting sarcasm. If 
the sarcasm told, he showed his triumph by a low-pitched 
laugh ; if it failed, he evinced his displeasure by a contemptu- 
ous sneer or a grim scowl. 

Isaura and Graham were not seated near each other, and 
were for the most part contented to be listeners. 

On adjourning to the salon after dinner, Graham, however, 
was approaching the chair in which Isaura had placed herself, 


THE PARISIANS. 


189 


when the young author, forestalling him, dropped into the 
seat next to her, and began a conversation in a voice so low 
that it might have passed for a whisper. The Englishman 
drew back and observed them. He soon perceived, with a 
pang of jealousy not unmingled with scorn, that the author’s 
talk appeared to interest Isaura. She listened with evident 
attention ; and when she spoke in return, though Graham did 
not hear her words, he could observe on her expressive coun- 
tenance an increased gentleness of aspect. 

“ I hope,” said the physician, joining Graham, as most of 
the other guests gathered around Savarin, who was in his live- 
liest vein of anecdote and wit — “ I hope that the fair Italian 
will not allow that ink-bottle imp to persuade her that she has 
fallen in love with him.” 

“ Do young ladies generally find him so seductive ?” asked 
Graham, with a forced smile. 

“ Probably enough. He has the reputation of being very 
clever and very wicked, and that is a sort of character which 
has the serpent’s fascination for the daughters of Eve.” 

“ Is the reputation merited ?” 

“As to the cleverness, I am not a fair judge. I dislike 
that sort of writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, 
and in which young Rameau excels. He has the knack of 
finding very exaggerated phrases by which to express common- 
place thoughts. He writes verses about love in words so 
stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon 
Semele. But wliyjn you examine his words, as a sober pathol- 
ogist like myself is disposed to do, your fear for the peace 
of households vanishes^they are ‘ Vox et ^aderea nihiV — no 


190 


THE PARISIANS. 


man really in love would use them. He writes prose about 
the wrongs of humanity. You feel for humanity. You say, 
‘ Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,’ and you find nothing 
but balderdash. Still I am bound to say that both in verse 
and prose Gustave Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste 
of the day, and therefore he is coming into vogue. So much 
as to his writings : as to his wickedness, you have only to 
look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so 
wicked as he wishes to seem. In a word, then, Mons. Gustave 
Rameau is a type of that somewhat numerous class among the 
youth of Paris, which I call ‘ the Lost Tribe of Absinthe.’ 
There is a set of men who begin to live full gallop while they 
are still boys. As a general rule, they are originally of the 
sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less gallop, 
without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant so fasci- 
nates their peculiar nervous system as absinthe. The number 
of patients in this set who at the age of thirty are more worn 
out than septuagenarians, increases so rapidly as to make one 
dread to think what will be the next race of Frenchmen. To 
the predilection for absinthe young Rameau and the writers 
of his set add the imitation of Heine, after, indeed, the man- 
ner of caricaturists, who effect a likeness striking in proportion 
as it is ugly. It is not easy to imitate the pathos and the 
wit of Heine, but it is easy to imitate his defiance of the Deity, 
his mockery of right and wrong, his relentless war on that 
heroic standard of thought and action which the writers who 
exalt their nation intuitively preserve. Rameau cannot be a 
Heine, but he can be to Heine what a misshapen snarling 
dwarf is to a mangled blaspheming Titan. Yet he interests 


THE PARISIANS. 


191 


the women in general, and he evidently interests the fair 
Signorina in especial.” 

Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence, Isaura lifted the 
head which had hitherto bent in an earnest listening attitude 
that seemed to justify the Doctor’s remarks, and looked round. 
Her eyes met Graham’s with the fearless candor which made 
half the charm of their bright yet soft intelligence. But she 
dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a change of 
color, ^for the expression of Graham’s face was unlike that 
which she had hitherto seen on it — it was hard, stern, some- 
what disdainful. A minute or s6 afterwards she rose, and, in 
passing across the room towards the group round the host, 
paused at a table covered with books and prints, near to which 
Graham was standing — alone. The Doctor had departed in 
company with the German Count. 

Isaura took up one of the prints. 

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “Sorrento — my Sorrento. Have 
you ever visited Sorrento, Mr. Yane?” 

Her question and her movement were evidently in concilia- 
tion. Was the conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a 
sentiment more innocent and artless ? 

Graham doubted, and replied coldly, as he bent over the 
print — 

“ I once stayed there a few days ; but my recollection of it 
is not sufficiently lively to enable me to recognize its features 
in this design.” 

“ That is the house, at least so they say, of Tasso’s father ; 
of course you visited that ?” 

“ Yes, it was a hotel in my time ; I lodged there.” 


192 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ And I too. There I first read the ‘ Gerusalemme.’ ” The 
last words were said in Italian, with a low measured tone, 
inwardly and dreamily. 

A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French 
here struck in and prevented Q-raham’s rejoinder: ^^QueJ. joU 
dessm! What is it. Mademoiselle ?” 

Grraham recoiled : the speaker was Gustave Rameau, Avho 
had, unobserved, first watched Isaura, then rejoined her side. 

“A view of Sorrento, Monsieur, but it does not do justice 
to the place. I was pointing out the house which belonged 
to Tasso’s father.” 

“ Tasso ! Hein ! and which is the fair Eleonora’s ?” 

“ Monsieur,” answered Isaura, rather startled at that ques- 
tion from a professed homnie de lettrcs^ “ Eleonora did not 
live at Sorrento.” 

“ Tant pis pour Sorrente” said the homnie de lettres^ care- 
lessly. “ No one would care for Tasso if it were not for 
Eleonora.” 

“ I should rather have thought,” said Graham, “ that no 
one would have cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso.” 

Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously. 

“ Pardon^ Monsieur — ^in every ago a love-story keeps its 
interest; but who cares nowadays for le clinquant du Tasse?'* 

“Ae clinquant du Tasse l” exclaimed Isaura, indignantly. 

“ The expression is Boileau’s, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of 
the ‘ Sot de qualiUj who prefers 


‘ Le clinquant du Taaae dt tout Vor de Virgile* 

But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first.’ 


THE PARISIANS. 


193 


“ I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil,” 
said Isaura. 

“Possibly,” remarked Grraham, “ Monsieur does not know 
Italian, and has therefore not read Tasso.” 

“ If that be meant in sarcasm,” retorted Rameau, “ I con- 
strue it as a compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to 
study the masterpieces of modern literature need learn no 
language and read no authors but his own.” 

Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh. “ I should ad- 
mire the frankness of that boast. Monsieur, if in our talk just 
now you had not spoken as contemptuously of what we are 
accustomed to consider French masterpieces as you have done 
of Virgil and Tasso.” 

“ Ah, Mademoiselle, it is not my fault if you have had 
teachers of taste so rococo as to bid you find masterpieces 
in the tiresome stilted tragedies of Corneille and Racine — 
poetry of a court, not of a people. One simple novel, one 
simple stanza, that probes the hidden recesses of the human 
heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state, denounces 
the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth 
a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call ‘ the classics.’ 
We agree, at least, in one thing. Mademoiselle : we both do 
homage to the genius of your friend Madame de G-rantmesnil,” 

“Your friend, Signorina!” cried Grraham, incredulously: 
“ is Madame de Grrantmesnil your friend?” 

“ The dearest I have in the world.” 

Graham’s face darkened ; he turned away in silence, and 
in another minute vanished from the room, persuading him- 
self that he felt not one pang of jealousy in leaving Gustave 
V^OL. I.— I 13 


194 


THE PARISIANS. 


Kameau by the side of Isaura. “ Her dearest friend Madame 
de Girantmesnil !” he muttered. 

A word now on Isaura’s chief correspondent. Madame de 
Grantmesnil was a woman of noble birth and ample fortune. 
She had separated from her husband in the second year after 
marriage. She was a singularly eloquent writer, surpassed 
among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and renown 
only by George Sand. 

At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank expo- 
sition of her views, she had commenced her career in letters 
by a work of astonishing power and pathos, directed against 
the institution of marriage as regulated in Roman Catholic 
communities. I do not know that it said more on this deli- 
cate subject than the English Milton has said ; but then Mil- 
ton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt 
a style likely to captivate the working-classes. Madame de 
Grantmesnil’s first book was deemed an attack on the religion 
of the country, and captivated those among the working- 
classes who had already abjured that religion. This work was 
followed up by others more or less in defiance of “received 
opinions some with political, some with social revolutionary 
aim and tendency, but always with a singular purity of style. 
Search all her books, and, however you might revolt from her 
doctrine, you could not find a hazardous expression. The 
novels of English young ladies are naughty in comparison. 
Of late years, whatever might be hard or audacious in her 
political or social doctrines softened itself into charm amid 
the golden haze of romance. Her writings had grown more 
and more purely artistic — poetizing what is good and beautiful 


THE PARISIANS. 


195 


in the realities of life, rather than creating a false ideal out 
of what is vicious and deformed. Such a woman, separated 
young from her husband, could not enunciate such opinions 
and lead a life so independent and uncontrolled as Madame 
de Grantmesnil had done, without scandal, without calumny. 
Nothing, however, in her actual life had ever been so proved 
against her as to lower the high position she occupied in right 
of birth, fortune, renown. Wherever she went she was fUee — 
as in England foreign princes, and in America foreign authors, 
are fetes. Those who knew her well concurred in praise of 
her lofty, generous, lovable qualities. Madame de Grantmesnil 
had known Mr. Selby ; and when, at his death, Isaura, in the 
innocent age between childhood and youth, had been left the 
most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of the 
earth, this famous woman, worshiped by the rich for her in- 
tellect, adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the 
orphan’s friendless side, breathing love once more into her 
pining heart, and waking for the first time the desires of 
genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim self-consciousness of 
a soul between sleep and waking. 

But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham’s place, 
and suppose that you were beginning to fall in love with a 
girl whom for many good reasons you ought not to marry ; 
suppose that in the same hour in which you were angrily 
conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it wounds 
your self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that her 
dearest friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to 
the institution of marriage 1 


CHAPTEE IV. 


On the same day ia which Graham dined with the Savarins, 
M. Louvier assembled round his table the ilite of the young 
Parisians who constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet 
whom he had invited his new friend the Marquis de Eoche- 
briant. Most of them belonged to the Legitimist party — the 
noblesse of the faubourg ; those who did not belonged to no 
political party at all, — indifferent to the cares of mortal states 
as the gods of Epicurus. Foremost among ihhjeunesse doree 
were Alain’s kinsmen, Eaoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar. 
To these Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bon- 
homie^ as if he were the head of the family. “ 1 need not 
bid you, young folks, to make friends with each other. A 
Vandemar and a Eochebriant are not made friends — they are 
born friends.” So saying, he turned to his other guests. 

Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in 
the cordial warmth with which his cousins greeted him. 

These young men had a striking family likeness to each 
other, and yet in feature, coloring, and expression, in all save 
that strange family likeness, they were contrasts. 

Eaoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with 
sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable 
strength of frame. His hair worn short, and his silky beard 
worn long, were dark, so were his eyes, shaded by curved 
drooping lashes ; his complexion was pale, but clear and health- 
196 


THE PARISIANS. 


197 


ful. In repose the expression of his face was that of a some- 
what melancholy indolence, hut in speaking it became singu- 
larly sweet, with a smile of the exquisite urbanity which no 
artificial politeness can bestow; it must emanate from that 
native high breeding which has its source in goodness of heart, 
Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of a golden chestnut. 
He wore no beard, only a small moustache rather darker than 
his hair. His complexion might in itself be called effeminate, 
its bloom was so fresh and delicate ; but there was so much of 
boldness and energy in the play of his countenance, the hardy 
outline of the lips, and the open breadth of the forehead, 
that “ effeminate ” was an epithet no one ever assigned to his 
aspect. He was somewhat under the middle height, but 
beautifully proportioned, carried himself well, and somehow 
or other did not look short even by the side of tall men. Al- 
together he seemed formed to be a mother’s darling, and spoiled 
by women, yet to hold his own among men with a strength 
of will more evident in his look and his bearing than it was 
in those of his graver and statelier brother. 

. Both were considered by their young co-equals models in 
dress, but in Raoul there was no sign that care or thought 
upon dress had been bestowed ; the simplicity of his costume 
was absolute and severe. On his plain shirt-front there gleamed 
not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled not a ring. Enguer- 
rand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in his attire ; 
the hroderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of 
the Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and 
wrist-buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double 
the rental of Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing. 


198 


THE PARISIANS. 


He was one of those happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make 
constant presents. All about him was so bright that the 
atmosphere around seemed gayer for his presence. 

In one respect at least the brothers closely resembled each 
other — in that exquisite graciousness of manner for which the 
genuine French noble is traditionally renowned — a gracious- 
ness that did not desert them even when they came reluctantly 
into contact with roturiers or republicans ; but the gracious- 
ness became Igaliti^ fraterniti towards one of their caste and 
kindred. 

We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you,” said 
Raoul, still retaining in his grasp the hand he had taken. 

“ Vilain consinj^ said the livelier Enguerrand, “ to have 
been in Paris twenty-four hours, and without letting us know.” 

“ Has not your father told you that I called upon him ?” 

“ Our father,” answered Raoul, “ was not so savage as to 
conceal that fact, but he said you were only here on business 
for a day or two, had declined his invitation, and would not 
give your address. Pauvre plre ! we scolded him well for 
letting you escape from us thus. My mother has not forgiven 
him yet ; we must present you to her to-morrow. I answer 
for your liking her almost as much as she will like you.” 

Before Alain could answer, dinner was announced. Alain’s 
place at dinner was between his cousins. How pleasant they 
made themselves ! it was the first time in which Alain had 
been brought into such familiar conversation with countrymen 
of his own rank as well as his own age. His heart warmed 
to them. The general talk of the other guests was strange to 
his ear j it ran much upon horses and races, upon the opera 


THE PARISIANS. 


199 


and the ballet ; it was enlivened with satirical anecdotes of 
persons whose names were unknown to the Provincial : not 
a word was said that showed the smallest interest in politics’' 
or the slightest acquaintance with literature. The world of 
these well-born guests seemed one from which all that con- 
cerned the great mass of mankind was excluded, yet the talk 
was that which could only be found in a very polished society ; 
in it there was not much wit, but there was a prevalent vein 
of gayety, and the gayety was never violent, the laughter was 
never loud ; the scandals circulated might imply cynicism the 
most absolute, but in language the most refined. The Jockey 
Club of Paris has its perfume. 

Raoul did not inix in the general conversation ; he devoted 
himself pointedly to the amusement of his cousin, explain- 
ing to him the point of the anecdotes circulated, or hitting 
off in terse sentences the characters of the talkers. 

Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vivacious than 
his brother, and contributed freely to the current play of 
light gossip and mirthful sally. 

Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian prince, said 
little, except to recommend a wine or an entrie^ but kept his 
eye constantly on the Vandemars and Alain. 

Immediately after coffee the guests departed. Before they 
did so, however, Raoul introduced his cousin to those of the 
party most distinguished by hereditary rank or social position. 
With these the name of Rochebriant was too historically 
famous not to insure respect of its owner ; they welcomed him 
among them as if he were their brother. 

The French duke claimed him as a connection by an alii- 


200 


THE PARISIANS. 


ance in the fourteenth century; the Russian prince had 
known the late Marquis, and “trusted that the son would 
allow him to improve into friendship the acquaintance he had 
formed with the father.” 

Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm in Alain's, 
and said, “ I am not going to release you so soon after we have 
caught you. You must come with me to a house in which I 
spend at least an hour or two every evening. I am at home 
there. Bah ! I take no refusal. Do not suppose I carry you 
off to Bohemia, a country which, I am sorry to say, Enguer- 
rand now and then visits, but . which is to me as unknown as 
the mountains of the moon. The house I speak of is comme 
'll fmit to the utmost. It is that of the Contessa di Rimini — 
a charming Italian by marriage, . but by birth and in character 
French — -jusqu'au bout des angles. My mother adores her.” 

That dinner at M. Louvier’s had already effected a great 
change in the. mood and temper of Alain de Rochebriant : he 
felt, as if by magic, the sense of youth, of rank, of station, 
which had been so suddenly checked and stifled, warmed to 
life within his veins. He should have deemed himself a boor 
had he refused the invitation so frankly tendered. 

But on reaching the coupe which the brothers kept in 
common, and seeing it only held two, he drew back. 

“ Nay, enter, mon clier]^^ said Raoul, divining the cause of 
his hesita ion ; “ Enguerrand has gone on to his club.” 


CHAPTER V. 


“ Tell me,” said Raoul, when they were in the carriage, 
“ how you came to know M. Louvier.” ^ 

“ He is my chief mortgagee.” 

“ H’m ! that explains it. But you might be in worse 
hands ; the man has a character for liberality.” 

“ Did your father mention to you my circumstances, and 
the reason that brings me to Paris ?” 

“ Since you put the question point-blank, my dear cousin, 
he did.” 

“ He told you how poor I am, and how keen must be my life- 
long struggle to keep Rochebriant as the home of my race ?” 

“ He told us all that could make us still more respect the 
Marquis de Rochebriant, and still more eagerly long to know 
our cousin and the head of our house,” answered Raoul, with 
a certain nobleness of tone and manner. 

Alain pressed his kinsman’s hand with grateful emotion. 

“ Yet,” he said, falteringly, “ your Mher agreed with me 
that my circumstances would not allow me to ” 

“ Bah 1” interrupted Raoul, with a gentle laugh ; “ my 
father is a very clever man, doubtless, but he knows only the 
world of his own day, nothing of the world of ours. I and 
Enguerrand will call on you to-morrow, to take you to my 
mother, and, before doing so, to consult as to affairs in general. 
On this last matter Enguerrand is an oracle. Here we are 
at the Contessa’s.” 


T* 


201 


CHAPTER VI. 


The Contest di Rimini received lier visitors in a boudoir 
furnished with much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by 
no means inexpensive. The draperies were but of chintz, 
and the walls covered with the same material, a lively pattern, 
in which the prevalent tints were rose-color and white ; but 
the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the 
cabinets or arranged in the shelves, the small nicknacks scat- 
tered on the tables, were costly rarities of art. 

The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat 
passed her thirtieth year, not strikingly handsome, but ex- 
quisitely pretty. “ There is,” said a great French writer, 
“ only one way in which a woman can be handsome, but a 
hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty and it 
would be impossible to reckon up the number of ways in 
which Adeline di Rimini carried off the prize in prettiness. 

Yet it would be unjust to the personal attractions of the 
Contessa to class them all under the word “ prettiness.” 
When regarded more attentively, there was an expression in 
her countenance that might almost be called divine, it spoke 
so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an untroubled soul. 
An English poet once described her by repeating the old 
lines, — 

“ Her face is like the milky way i’ the sky — 

A inei ting of gentle lights without a name.” 


202 


THE PARISIANS. 


203 


She was net alone; an elderly lady sat on an arm-chair 
by the fire, engaged in knitting, and a man, also elderly, and 
whose dress proclaimed him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite 
corner, with a large Angora cat on his lap. 

“ I present to you, Madame,” said Kaoul, “ my new-found 
cousin, the seventeenth Marquis de Rochebriant, whom I am 
proud to consider, on the male side, the head of our house, 
representing its eldest branch : welcome him for my sake — in 
future he will be welcome for his own.” 

The Contessa replied very graciously to this introduction, 
and made room for Alain on the divan from whieh she had 
risen. 

The old lady looked up from her knitting, the eccleshistic 
removed the cat from his lap. Said the old lady, “ I announce 
myself to M. le Marquis ; I knew his mother well enough to 
be invited to his christening ; otherwise I have no pretension 
to the acquaintance of a cavalier heau ^ — being old — rather 

deaf — very stupid — exceedingly poor ” 

“And,” interrupted Raoul, “the woman in all Paris the 
most adored for honti and consulted for savoir-vivre by the 
young cavaliers whom she deigns to receive. Alain, I present 
you to Madame de Maury, the widow of a distinguished 
author and academician, and the daughter of the brave Henri 
de Gerval, who fought for the good cause in La Vendee. I 
present you also to the Abb^ Vertpr4, who has passed his life 
In the vain endeavor to make other men as good as himself” 

“ Base flatterer!” said the Abb^, pinching Raoul’s ear with 
one hand, while he extended the other to Alain. “ Do not 
let your cousin frighten you from knowing me, M. le Mar- 


THE PARISIANS. 


L>01: 


quis ; when he was my pupil, he so convinced me of the 
incorrigibility of perverse human nature, that I now chiefly 
address myself to the moral improvement of the brute crea- 
tion. Ask the Contessa if I have not achieved a heau succes 
with her Angora ('at. Three months ago that creature had 
t]j8 two worst propensities of man. He was* at once savage 
and mean ; he bit, he stole. Does he ever bite now ? No. 
Does he ever steal ? No. Why ? I have awakened in that 
cat the dormant conscience, and, that done, the conscience 
regulates his actions : once made aware of the difierence be- 
tween wrong and right, the cat maintains it unswervingly, as 
if it were a law of nature. But if, with prodigious labor, 
one does awaken conscience* in a human sinner, it has no 
steady effect on his conduct — he continues to sin all the same. 
Mankind at Paris, Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between 
two classes — one bites and the other steals : shun both ; devote 
yourself to cats.” 

The Abb(i delivered his oration with a gravity of mien and 
tone which made it difiicult to .guess whether he spoke in 
sport or in earnest — in simple playfulness or with latent sar- 
casm. • 

But on the brow and in the eye of the priest there was a 
general expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain 
incline to the belief that he was only speaking as a pleasant 
humorist; and the Marquis replied gayly — . 

“ Monsieur I’Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats, 
when taught by so intelligent a preceptor, still the business 
of human life is not transacted by cats ; and since men must 
deal with men, permit me, as a preliminary caution, to inquire 


THE PARISIANS. 


205 


ill which class I must rank yourself. Do you bite, or do you 
steal ?•” 

This sally, which showed that the Marquis was already 
shaking off his provincial reserve, met with great success. 

Raoul and the Contessa laughed merrily; Madame de 
Maury clapped her hands, and cried “Rieii /” 

' The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, “ Both. I am 
a priest ; it is my duty to bite the bad and steal from the 
good, as you will see, M. le Marquis, if you will glance at 
this paper.” 

Here he handed to Alain a memorial on behalf of an 
afflicted family who had been burnt out of their home and 
reduced from comparative ease to absolute want. There was 
a list appended of some twenty subscribers, the last being the 
Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame de Maury, five. 

“ Allow me. Marquis,” said the Abbe, “ to steal from you ; 
bless you twofold, mon Jils !” (taking the napoleon Alain ex- 
tended to him) — “ first, for your charity — secondly, for the 
effect of its example upon the heart of your cousin. Raoul 
de Vandemar, stand and deliver. Bah! — what! only ten 
francs !” 

Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived by the rest, as 
he answered, “ Abb4, I should excel your expectations of my 
cureer if I always continue worth half as much as my cousin.” 

Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the delicate tact of 
his richer kinsman in giving less than himself, and the Abb4 
replied, “Niggard, you are pardoned. Humility is a more 
difficult virtue to produce than charity, and in your case an 
instance of it is so rare that it merits encouragement.” 


206 


THE PARISIANS. 


The “tea-equipage” was now served in what at Paris is 
called the English fashion ; the Contessa presided over it, the 
guests gathered round the table, and the evening passed away 
in the innocent gayety of a domestic circle. The talk, if not 
especially intellectual, was at least not fashionable — ^books 
were not discussed, neither were scandals ; yet somehow or 
other it was cheery and animated, like that of a happy family 
in a country-house. Alain thought still the better of Raoul 
that, Parisian though he was, he could appreciate the charm 
of an evening so innocently spent. 

On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a general invita- 
tion to drop in whenever he was not better engaged. 

“ I except only the opera nights,” said she. “ My husband 
has gone to Milan on his affairs, and during his absence I do 
not go to parties ; the opera I cannot resist.” 

Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings. “A-w revoir ; to- 
morrow at one o’clock expect Enguerrand and myself.’ 


CHAPTER VIL 

Raoul and Enguerrand called on Alain at the hour fixed. 

“ In the first place,” said Raoul, “ I must beg you to accept 
my mother’s regrets that she cannot receive you to-day. She 
and the Contessa belong to a society of ladies formed for visit- 
ing the poor, and this is their day, but to-morrow you must 
dine with us en famille. Now to business. Allow me to 


THE PARISIANS. 


207 


light my cigar while you confide the whole state of afiairs to 
Enguerrand : whatever he counsels, I am sure to approve.” 

Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his circumstances, his 
mortgages, and the hopes which his avou6 had encouraged him 
to place in the friendly disposition of M. Louvier. When he 
had concluded, Enguerrand mused for a few moments before 
replying. At last he said, “ Will you trust me to call on 
Louvier on your behalf? I shall but inquire if he is inclined 
to take on himself the other mortgages, and, if so, on what 
terms. Our relationship gives me the excuse for my inter- 
ference ; and, to say truth, I have had much familiar inter- 
course with the man. I too am a speculator, and have often 
profited by Louvier’s advice. You may ask what can be his 
object in serving me ; he can gain nothing by it. To this I 
answer, the key to his good offices is in his character. Auda- 
cious though he be as a speculator, he is wonderfully prudent 
as a politician. This belle France of ours is like a stage tum- 
bler : one can never be sure whether it will stand on its head 
or its feet. Louvier very wisely wishes to feel himself safe 
whatever party comes uppermost. He has no faith in the 
duration of the Empire ; and as, at all events, the Empire 
will not confiscate his millions, he takes no trouble in con- 
ciliating Imperialists. But on the principle which indudfes 
certain savages to worship the devil and neglect the hon Diev,^ 
because the devil is spiteful and the hon Dieu is too beneficent 
to injure them, Louvier, at heart detesting as well as dreading 
a republic, lays himself out to secure friends with the Repub- 
licans of all classes, and pretends to espouse their cause. Next 
to them he is very conciliatory to the Orleanists. Lastly, 


208 


THE PARISIANS. 


though he thinks the Legitimists have no chance, he desires 
to keep well with the nobles of that party, because they ex- 
ercise a considerable influence over that sphere of opinion 
which belongs to fashion ; for fashion is never powerless in 
Paris. Eaoul and myself are no mean authorities in salons 
and clubs ; and a good word from us is worth having. 

“ Besides, Louvier himself in his youth set up for a dandy ; 
and that deposed ruler of dandies, our unfortunate kinsman, 
Victor de Maul4on, shed some of his own radiance on the 
money-lender’s son. But when Victor’s star was eclipsed, 
Louvier ceased to gleam. The dandies cut him. In his heart 
he exults that the dandies now throng to his soirees. Bref^ 
the millionaire is especially civil to me — the more so as I 
know intimately two or three eminent journalists ; and Louvier 
takes pains to plant garrisons in the press. I trust I have 
explained the grounds on which I may be a better diplomatist 
to employ than your avou6 ; and with your leave I will go to 
Louvier at once.” 

“Let him go,” said Baoul. “Enguerrand never fails in 
anything he undertakes, especially,” he added, with a smile 
half sad, half tender, “ when one wishes to replenish one’s 
purse.” 

•“I, too, gratefully grant such an ambassador all powers to 
treat,” said Alain. “ I am only ashamed to consign to him a 
post so much beneath his genius,” — “ and his birth,” he was 
about to add, but wisely checked himself. 

Enguerrand shrugged his shoulders. “ You can’t do me a 
greater kindness than by setting my wits at work. I fall a mar- 
tyr to ennuiy when I am not in action,” he said, and was gone. 


THE PARISIANS. 


209 


“ It makes me very melancholy at times,” said Raoul, fling- 
ing away the end of his cigar, “ to think that a man so clever 
and so energetic as Enguerrand should be as much excluded 
from the service of his country as if he were an Ii’oquois 
Indian. He would have made a great diplomatist.” 

“ Alas !” replied Alain, with a sigh, “ I begin to doubt 
whether we Legitimists are justified in maintaining a useless 
loyalty to a sovereign who renders us morally exiles in the 
land of our birth.” 

“ I have no doubt on the subject,” said Raoul. “ We are 
not justified on the score of policy, but we have no option at 
present on the score of honor. We should gain so much for 
ourselves if we adopted the State livery and took the State 
wages that no man would esteem us as patriots ; we should 
only be despised as apostates. So long as Henry V. lives, and 
does not resign his claim, we cannot be active citizens ; we 
must be mournful lookers-on. But what matters it? We 
nobles of the old race are becoming rapidly extinct. Under 
any form of government likely to be established in France we 
are equally doomed. The French people, aiming at an im- 
possible equality, will never again tolerate a race of gentils- 
Tiommes. They cannot prevent, without destroying commerce 
and capital altogether, a quick succession of men of the day, 
who form nominal aristocracies much more opposed to equality 
than any hereditary class of nobles. But they refuse these 
fleeting substitutes of born patricians all permanent stake in 
the country, since whatever estate they buy must be subdivided 
at their death. My poor Alain, you are making it the one 
ambition of your life to preserve to your posterity the home 
VoL. I. 14 


210 


THE PARISIANS. 


and lands of your forefathers. How is that possible, even 
supposing you could redeem the mortgages? You marry 
some day — ^you have children, and Rochebriant must then be 
sold to pay for their separate portions^ How this condition 
of things, while rendering us so ineffective to perform the 
normal functions of a noblesse in public life, affects us in 
private life, may be easily conceived. 

“ Condemned to a career of pleasure and frivolity, we can 
scarcely escape from the contagion of extravagant luxury which 
forms the vice of the time. With grand names to keep up, 
and small fortunes whereon to keep them, we readily incur 
embarrassment and debt. Then neediness conquers pride. 
We cannot be great merchants, but we can be small gamblers 
on the Bourse, or, thanks to the Orldit Mohilier, imitate a 
cabinet minister and keep a shop under another name. Per- 
haps you have heard that Enguerrand and I keep a shop. 
Pray buy your gloves there. Strange fate for men whose 
ancestors fought in the first Crusade — mais que voulez-vous 

“ I was told of the shop,” said Alain, “ but the moment I 
knew you I disbelieved the story.” 

“ Quite true. Shall I confide to you why we resorted to 
that means of finding ourselves in pocket-money ? My father 
gives us rooms in his hotel ; the use of his table, which we 
do not much profit by ; and an allowance, on which we could 
not live as young men of our class live at Paris. Enguerrand 
had his means of spending pocket-money, I mine ; but it came 
to the same thing — the pockets were emptied. We incurred 
debts. Two years ago my father straitened himself to pay 
them, saying, ‘ The next time you come to me with debts, 


THE PARISIANS. 


211 


however small, you must pay them yourselves, or you must 
marry and leave it to me to find you wives.’ This threat 
appalled us both. A month afterwards, Enguerrand made a 
lucky hit at the Bourse, and proposed to invest the proceeds 
in a shop. I resisted as long as I could, but Enguerrand 
triumphed over me, as he always does. He found an excellent 
deputy in a bonne who had nursed us in childhood and 
married a journeyman perfumer who understands the business. 
It answers well ; we are not in debt, and we have preserved 
our freedom.” 

After these confessions Kaoul went away, and Alain fell 
into a mournful reverie, from which he was roused by a loud 
ring at his bell. He opened the door, and beheld M. Louvier. 
The burly financier was much out of breath after making so 
steep an ascent. It was in gasps that he muttered, “ Bon jour ; 
excuse me if I derange you.” Then entering and seating 
himself on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech, 
rolling his eyes staringly round the meagre, unluxurious room, 
and then concentrating their gaze upon its occupier. 

“ my dear Marquis !” he said at last, “I hope the 
next time I visit you the ascent may be less arduous. One 
would think you were in training to ascend the Himalaya.” 

The haughty noble writhed under this jest, and the spirit 
inborn in his order spoke in his answer. 

“ I am accustomed to dwell on heights, M. Louvier : the 
castle of Bochebriant is not on a level with the town.” 

An angry gleam shot from the eyes of the millionaire, but 
there was no other sign of displeasure in his answer. 

“ Bien dit, mon cher : how you remind me of your father 1 


212 


THE PARISIANS. 


Now give me leave to speak on affairs. I have seen your 
cousin Enguerrand de Vandemar. Homme de moyens^ though 
joli gargon. He proposed that you should call on me. I said 
‘ no ’ to the cher petit Enguerrand — a visit from me was due 
to you. To cut matters short, M. Gandrin has allowed me to 
look into your papers. I was disposed to serve you from the 
first — I am still more disposed to serve you now. I undertake 
to pay off all your other mortgages, and become sole mortgagee, 
and on terms that I have jotted down on this paper, and 
which I hope will content you.” 

He placed a paper in Alain’s hand, and took out a box, 
from which he extracted a jujube, placed it in his mouth, 
folded his hands, and reclined back in his chair, with his eyes 
half closed, as if exhausted alike by his ascent and his generosity. 

In effect, the terms were unexpectedly liberal. The reduced 
interest on the mortgages would leave the Marquis an income 
of one thousand pounds a year instead of four hundred. 
Louvier proposed to take on himself the legal cost of transfer, 
and to pay to the Marquis twenty-five thousand francs on the 
completion of the deed as a bonus. The mortgage did not 
exempt the building-land, as Hebert desired. In all else it 
was singularly advantageous, and Alain could but feel a thrill 
of grateful delight at an offer by which his stinted income was 
raised to comparative affluence. 

“Well, Marquis,” said Louvier, “ what does the castle say 
to the town ?” 

“ M. Louvier,” answered Alain, extending his hand with 
cordial eagerness, “ accept my sincere apologies for the indis- 
cretion of my metaphor. Poverty is proverbially sensitive to 


THE PARISIANS. 


213 


jests on it. I owe it to you if I cannot hereafter make that ex- 
cuse for any words of mine that may displease you. The terms 
you propose are most liberal, and I close with them at once.” 

“ jBoti,” said Louvier, shaking vehemently the hand offered 
to him ; “ I will take the paper to Gandrin and instruct him 
accordingly. And now may I attach a condition to the agree- 
ment which is not put down on paper ? It may have surprised 
you perhaps that I should propose a gratuity of twenty-five 
thousand francs on completion of the contract. It is a droll 
thing to do, and not in the ordinary way of business, therefore 
I must explain. Marquis, pardon the liberty I take, but you 
have inspired me with an interest in your future. With your 
birth, connections, and figure, you should push your way in 
the world far and fast. But you can’t do so in a province. 
You must find your opening at Paris. I wish you to spend 
a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a nouveau 
richey but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting 
you all the social advantages that belong to it. These twenty- 
five thousand francs, in addition to your improved income, 
will enable you to gratify my wish in this respect. Spend 
the money in Paris: you will want every sou of it in the 
course of the year. It will be money well spent. Take my 
advice, cher Marquis. Au plaisir.''^ 

The financier bowed himself out. The young Marquis 
forgot all the mournful reflections with which Baoul’s con- 
versation had inspired him. He gave a new touch to his 
toilet, and sallied forth with the air of a man on whose 
morning of life a sun heretofore clouded has burst forth and 
transformed the face of the landscape. 


CHAPTEK VIIL 

Since the evening spent at the Savarins’ Graham had seen 
no more of Isaura. He had avoided all chance of seeing her 
— in fact, the jealousy with which he had viewed her manner 
towards Rameau, and the angry amaze with which he had 
heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de Grantmesnil, 
served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made 
him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet un- 
pledged. But, alas ! the heart was enslaved already. It was 
under the most fatal of all spells — first love conceived at first 
sight. He was wretched ; and in his wretchedness his resolves 
became involuntarily weakened. He found himself making 
excuses for the beloved. What cause had he, after all, for 
that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him ? 
and if, in her youth and inexperience, Isaura had made her 
dearest frien'd of a great writer by whose genius she might be 
dazzled, and of whose opinions she might scarcely be aware, 
was it a crime that necessitated her eternal banishment from 
the reverence which belongs to all manly love? Certainly 
he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings. 
And then those grave reasonings known only to himself, and 
never to be confided to another — why he should yet reserve 
his hand unpledged — were not so imperative as to admit of 
no compromise. They might entail a sacrifice, and not a small 
one to a man of Graham’s views and ambition. But what is 
214 


THE PARISIANS. 


215 


love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honor, too 
great to offer up unknown, uncomprehended, to the one be- 
loved? StiL, while thus softened in his feelings towards 
Isaura, he became, perhaps in consequence of such softening, 
more and more restlessly impatient to fulfill the object for 
which he had come to Paris, the great step towards which 
was the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval. 

He had written more than once to M. Renard since the 
interview with that functionary already recorded, demanding 
whether Renard had not made some progress in the research 
on which he was employed, and had received short unsatis- 
factory replies preaching, patience and implying hope. 

The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard had taken 
no further pains in the matter. He considered it utter waste 
of time and thought to attempt a discovery to which the traces 
were so faint and so obsolete. If the discovery were effected, 
it must be by one of those chances which occur without labor 
or forethought of our own. He trusted only to such a chance 
in continuing the charge he had undertaken. But during the 
last day or two Glraham had become yet more ini^tient than 
before, and peremptorily requested another visit from this 
dilatory confidant. 

In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though 
naturally willing, if possible, to retain a client unusually 
generous, yet being, on the whole, an honest member of his 
profession, and feeling it to be somewhat unfair to accept large 
remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard said frankly, 
“ Monsieur, this affair is beyond me ; the keenest agent of our 
police could make nothing of it. Unless you can tell me more 


216 


THE PARISIANS. 


than you have done, I am utterly without a clue. I resign, 
therefore, the task with which you honored me, willing to 
resume it again if you can give me information that could 
render me of use.*’ 

“ What sort of information?” 

“ At least the names of some of the lady’s relations who 
may yet be living.” 

“ But it strikes me that, if I could get at that piece of 
knowledge, I should not require the services of the police. 
The relations would tell me what had become of Louise 
Duval qui^^e as readily as they would tell a police agent.” 

“ Quite true. Monsieur. It would really be picking, your 
pockets if I did not at once retire from your service. Nay, 
Monsieur, pardon me, no further payments ; I have already 
accepted too much. Your most obedient servant.” 

Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy reverie. He 
could not but be sensible of the difl&culties in the way of the 
object which had brought him to Paris, with somewhat san- 
guine expectations of success founded on a belief in the om- 
niscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be justified 
when they have to deal with a murderess or a political incen- 
diary. But the name of Louise Duval is about as common in 
France as that of Mary Smith in England ; and the English 
reader may judge what would be the likely result of inquiring 
through the ablest of our detectives after some Mary Smith 
of whom you could give little more information than that she 
was the daughter of a . drawing-master who had died twenty 
;years ago, that it was about fifteen years since anything had 
beC’U heard of her, and that you could not say if, through 


THE PARISIANS. 


217 


marriage or for other reasons, she had changed her name or 
not, and you had reasons for declining recourse to public ad- 
vertisements. In the course of inquiry so instituted, the 
probability would be that you might hear of a great many 
Mary Smiths, in the pursuit of whom your employe woul-d 
lose all sight and scent of the one Mary Smith for whom the 
chase was instituted. 

In the midst of Graham’« despairing reflections his laquais 
announced M. Frederick Lemercier. 

“ Cher Grarm-Varn. A thousand pardons if I disturb 
you at this late hour of the evening ; but you remember the 
request you made me when you first arrived in Paris this 
season ?” 

“ Of course I do — in case you should ever chance in your 
wide round of acquaintances to fall in with a Madame or 
Mademoiselle Duval of about the age of forty, or ar year or so 
less, to let me know : and you did fall in with two ladies of that 
name, but they were not the right one — not the person whom 
my friend begged me to discover — both much too young.” 

“ Eh hien^ mon cher. If you will come with me to le hal 
chamrpUre in the Champs Elysees to-night, I can show you a 
third Madame Duval ; her Christian name is Louise, too, of 
the age you mention — though slie does her best to look 
younger, and is still very handsome. You said your Duval 
was handsome. It was only last evening that I met this lady 
at a wirie given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, corypMe 
distmguee^ in love with young Rameau.” 

“ In love with young Rameau ? I am very glad to hear it. 
He returns the lov ?” 

VoL. I. — K 


218 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ I suppose so. He seems very proud of it. But d pro- 
pos of Madame Duval, she has been long absent from Paris 
— just returned — and looking out for conquests. She says 
she has a great penchant for the English ; promises me to be 
at this ball. Come.” 

“ Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier. I am at your 
service.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

The hal champUre was gay and brilliant, as such festal 
scenes are at Paris. A lovely night in the midst of May — 
lamps below and stars above : the society mixed, of course. 
Evidently, when Graham had singled out Frederic Lemercier 
from all hi^ acquaintances at Paris, to conjoin with the official 
aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had 
conjectured the probability that she might be found in the 
Bohemian world so familiar to Frederic ; if not as an in- 
habitant, at least as an explorer. Bohemia was largely repre- 
sented at the hal champetre^ but not without a fair sprinkling 
of what we call the “ respectable classes,” especially English and 
Americans, who brought their wives there to take care of them. 
Frenchmen, not needing such care, prudently left their wives 
at home. Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte 
de Passy and the Vicomte de Breze. 

On first entering the gardens, Graham’s eye was attracted 
and dazzled by a brilliant form. It was standing under a 
festoon of flowers extended from tree to tree, and a gas-jet 


THE PARISIANS. 


219 


opposite shone full upon the face — the face of a girl in all 
the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed anything to 
art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature. The 
beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant, 
and yet one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of 
deep mournfulness. She was surrounded by a group of 
young men, and the ring of her laugh jarred upon Graham’s 
ear. He pressed Frederic’s arm, and, directing his attention 
to the girl, asked who she was. 

“ Who ? Don’t you know ? That is Julie Caumartin. A 
little while ago her equipage was the most admired in the 
Bois, and great ladies condescended to copy her dress or her 
coiffure. But she has lost her splendor, and dismissed the 
rich admirer who supplied the fuel for its blaze, since she fell 
in love with Gustave Bameau. Doubtless she is expecting him 
to-night. You ought to know her; shall I present you?” 

“No,” answered Graham, with a compassionate expression 
in his manly face. “So young; seemingly so gay. Howl 
pity her !” 

“ What ! for throwing herself away on Bameau ? True. 
There is a great deal of good in her girl’s nature, if she had 
been properly trained. Bameau wrote a pretty poem on her, 
which turned her head and won her heart, in which she is styled 
the ‘ Ondine of Paris,’ — a nymph-like type of Paris itself” 

“Vanishing type, like her namesake; born of the spray, 
and vanishing soon into the deep,” said Graham. “ Pray go 
and look for the Duval ; you will find me seated yonder.” 

Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw himself on a 
solitary bench, while Lemercier went in search of Madame 


220 


THE PARISIANS. 


Duval. In a few minutes the Frenchman reappeared. By 
his side was a lady well dressed, and as she passed under the 
lamps Graham perceived that, though of a certain age, she 
was undeniably handsome. His heart beat more quickly. 
Surely this was the Louise Duval he sought. 

He rose from his seat, and was presented in due form tp 
the lady, with whom Frederic then discreetly left him. 

“ Monsieur Lemercier tells me that you think that we were 
once acquainted with each other.” 

“Nay, Madame; I should not fail to recognize you were 
that the case. A friend of mine had the honor of knowing 
a lady of your name ; and should I be fortunate enough to 
meet that lady, I am charged with a commission that may not 
be unwelcome to her. M. Lemercier tells me your nom de 
hapteme is Louise.” 

“ Louise Corinne, Monsieur.” 

“ And I presume that Duval is the name you take from 
your parents.” 

“ No ; my father’s name was Bernard. I married, when I 
was a mere child, M. Duval, in the wine-trade at Bordeaux.” 

“ Ah, indeed !” said Graham, much disappointed, but look- 
ing at her with a keen, searching eye, which she met with a 
decided frankness. Evidently, in his judgment, she was 
speaking the truth. 

“ You know English, I think, Madame,” he resumed, ad- 
dressing her in that language. 

“ A leetle — speak un peu^ 

“ Only a little ?” • 

Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in French, with 


THE PARISIANS. 


221 


a laugh, “ Is it that you were told that I spoke English by 
your countryman, Milord Sare Boulby? Petit sciUrat^ I 
hope he is well. He sends you a commission for me — so he 
ought: he behaved to me like a monster.” 

“ Alas ! I know nothing of my lord Sir Boulby. Were 
you never in England yourself?” 

“Never” — with a coquettish side-glance — “I should like 
so much to go. I have a foible for the English, in spite of 
that vilain petit Boulby. Who is it gave you the commission 
for me ? Ha ! I guess — le Capitaine Nelton.” 

“ No. What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you 
at Aix-la-Chapelle ?” 

“ You mean Baden ? I was there seven years ago, when I 
met le Capitaine Nelton — hel Tiomme aux cheveux rougesP 

“ But you have been at Aix?” 

“ Never.” 

“ I have, then, been mistaken, Madame, and have only to 
offer my most humble apologies.” 

“ But perhaps you will favor me with a visit, and we may 
on further conversation find that you are not mistaken. I 
can’t stay now, for I am engaged to dance with the Belgian 
of whom, no doubt, M. Lemercier has told you.” 

“ No, Madame, he has not.” 

“ Well, then, he will tell you. The Belgian is very jealous. 
But I am always at home between three and four. This is 
my card.” 

Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaimed, “ B this 
your own handwriting, Madame ?”• 

“Yes, indeed.” 


222 


THE PARISIANS. 


^^Trls-helle icriture^' said Graham, and receded with a cere- 
monious bow. “ Anything so unlike her handwriting. An- 
other disappointment,” muttered the Englishman, as the lady 
went back to the ball. 

A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was 
talking with De Passy and De Br4z4. 

. “Well,” said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, 
“ I hit the right nail on the head this time, eh ?” 

Graham shook his head. 

“ What ! Is she not the right Louise Duval ?” 

“ Certainly not.” 

The Count de Passy overheard the name, and turned. 
“ Louise Duval,” he said ; “ does Monsieur Vane know a 
Louise Duval ?” 

“ No ; but a friend asked me to inquire after a lady of that 
name whom he had met many years ago at Paris.” 

The Count mused a moment, and said, “Is it possible that 
your friend knew the family De Maul4on ?” 

“ I really can’t say ; what then ?” 

“ The old Vicomte de MauMon was one of my most inti- 
mate associates. In fact, our houses are connected. And he 
was extremely grieved, poor man, when his daughter Louise 
married her drawing-master, Auguste Duval.” 

“ Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval ? Pray say on. I 
think the Louise Duval my friend knew must have been her 
daughter. She was the only child of a drawing-master or 
artist named Auguste Duval, and probably enough her Chris- 
tian name would have been derived from her mother. A 
Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. Auguste Duval ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


223 


“ Yes ; the old Yicomte had espoused en premieres noces 
Mademoiselle Camille de Chavigny, a lady of birth equal to 
his own — had by her one daughter, Louise. I recollect her 
well, — a plain girl, with a high nose and a sour expression. 
She was just of age when the first Vicomtesse died, and 
by the marriage settlement she succeeded at once to her 
mother’s fortune, which was not large. The Vicomte was, 
however, so poor that the loss of that income was no trifle to 
him. Though past fifty, he was still very handsome. Men 
of that generation did not age soon. Monsieur,” said the 
Count, expanding his fine chest and laughing exultingly. 

“ He married, en secondes noces^ a lady of still higher birth 
than the first, and with a much better dot. Louise was indig- 
nant at this, hated her stepmother ; and when a son was born 
by the second marriage she left the paternal roof, went to 
reside with an old female relative near the Luxembourg, and 
there married this drawing-master. Her father and the 
family did all they could to prevent it ; but in these demo- 
cratic days a woman who has attained her majority can, if she 
persist in her determination, marry to please herself and dis- 
gi*ace her ancestors. After that mesalliance her father never 
would see her again. I tried in vain to soften him. All his 
parental affections settled on his handsome Victor. Ah ! you 
are too young to have known Victor de Mauleon during his 
short reign at Paris — as roi des viveurs^ 

“Yes, he was before my time ; but I have heard of him 
as a young man of great fashion — said to be very clever, a 
duelist, and a sort of Hon Juan.” 

“ Exactly.” 


224 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ And then I remember vaguely to have heard that he 
committed, or was said to have committed, some villainous 
action connected with a great lady’s jewels, and to have left 
Paris in consequence.” 

“ Ah, yes — a sad scrape. At that time there was a political 
crisis ; we were under a Republic ; anything against a noble 
was believed. But I am sure Victor de Mauleon was not the 
man to commit a larceny. However, it is quite true that he 
left Paris ; and I don’t know what has become of him since.” 
Here he touched He Brez4, who, though still near, had not 
been listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and 
laughter with Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance. 

“ De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear 
Victor de Mauleon ? — ^you knew him.” 

“ Knew him ? I should think so. Who could be in the 
great world and not know le heau Victor ? No ; after he 
vanished I never heard more of him, — doubtless long since 
dead. A good-hearted fellow, in spite of all his sins.” 

“ My dear M. de Breze, did you know his half-sister ?” 
asked Graham — a Madame Duval ?” 

“ No ; I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there ; I 
recollect that I met Victor once in the garden at Versailles, 
walking arm-in-arm with the most beautiful girl I ever sa w ; 
and when I complimented him afterwards at the Jockey Club 
on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the young 
lady was his niece. ‘ Niece ! ’ said I ; ‘ why, there can’t be 
more than five or six years between you.’ ‘About that, I 
suppose,’ said he ; ‘my half-sister, her mother, was more than 
twenty years older than I at the time of my birth.’ I doubted 


THE PARISIANS. 


225 


the truth of his story at the time ; but since you say he really 
had a sister, my doubt wronged him.” 

“ Have you never seen this same young lady since ?” 

“ Never.” 

“ How many years ago was this?” 

“ Let me see — about twenty or twenty-one years ago. How 
time flies !” 

Graham still continued to question, but could learn no 
further particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the 
band was striking up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz 
air, and mingled with that German music his ear caught the 
sprightly sounds of the i'rench laugh, one laugh distinguished 
from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted joy — 
the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, , and the 
sound of which had then saddened him. Looking toward the 
quarter from which it came, he again saw the “ Ondine of 
Paris.” She was not now the centre of a group. She had 
just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his arm 
with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a 
child’s. And so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary 
lamp-lit alley, till lost to the Englishman’s lingering gaze. 


CHAPTER X. 

The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard. 

“ Well,” he cried, when that dignitary appeared and took a 
Beat beside him j “ chance has favored me.” 

K* 16 


226 


THE PARISIANS. 


I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more 
wit in its little finger than the Paris police in its whole body.” 

“ I have ascertained the relations, on the mother’s side, of 
Louise Duval, and the only question is how to get at them.” 

Here Graham related what he had heard, and ended by 
saying, “ This Victor de Maul4on is therefore my Louise 
Duval’s uncle. He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in 
the year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight 
of her in Paris ; and surely he must know what became of her 
afterwards.” 

“Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the 
discovery of Victor de Mauleon. You seem not to know the 
particulars of that story about the jewels which brought him 
into some connection with the police and resulted in his dis- 
appearance from Paris.” 

“ No ; tell me the particulars.” 

“Victor de Mauleon was heir to some sixty or seventy 
thousand francs a year, chiefly on the mother’s side; for his 
father, though the representative of one of the most ancient 
houses in France, was very poor, having little of his own 
except the emoluments of an appointment in the court of 
Louis Philippe. 

“ But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into 
that inheritance, he very largely forestalled it. His tastes 
were magnificent. He took to ‘ sport’ — kept a famous stud, 
was a great favorite with the English, and spoke their lan- 
guage fluently. Indeed, he was considered very accomplished, 
and of considerable intellectual powers. It was generally said 
that some day or other, when he had sown his wild oats, he 


THE PARISIANS. 


227 


would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man. Altogether 
he was a very strong creature. That was a very strong age 
under Louis Philippe. The viveurs of Paris were fine types for 
the heroes of Dumas and Sue — full of animal life and spirits. 
Victor de Maul4on was a romance of Dumas — incarnated.” 

“ M. Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to 
your taste in polite literature.” 

“ Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to 
my humble eminence if he be not something else than a pro- 
fessional. He must study mankind wherever they are described 
— even in les romans. To return to Victor de Mauleon. 
Though he was a ‘ sportman,’ a gambler, a Don Juan, a 
duelist, nothing was ever said against his honor. On the 
contrary, on matters of honor he was a received oracle ; and 
even though he had fought several duels (that was the age of 
duels), and was reported without a superior, almost without an 
equal, in either weapon — the sword or the pistol — he is said 
never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to have so 
used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely 
to wound, an antagonist. 

“ I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect, 
for it was much talked of at the time. One of your country- 
men, who had never handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, 
took offense at something M. de Mauleon had said in dispar- 
agement of the Duke of Wellington, and called him out. 
Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his 
pistol, not in the air — that might have been an affront — but 
so as to be wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot 
at, and, when missed, said, ‘ Excuse the susceptibility of a 


228 


THE PARISIANS. 


Frenclimaii, loatli to believe tliat his countrymen can be 
beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one gentle- 
man can make to another for having forgotten the respect due 
to one of the most renowned of your national heroes.’ The 
Englishman’s name was Vane. Could it have been your 
father?” 

“ Very probably ; just like my father to call out any man 
who insulted the honor of his country, as represented by its 
men. I hope the two combatants became friends?” 

“ That I never heard j the duel was over — there my story 
ends.” 

“ Pray go on.” 

“ One day — it was in the midst of political events which 
would have silenced most subjects of private gossip — the heau 
monde was startled by the news that the Vicomte (he was 
then, by his father’s death, Vicomte) de Mauleon had been 
given into the custody of the police on the charge of stealing 

the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a distinguished 

foreigner). It seems that some days before this event tlie 
Due, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable sur- 
prise, had resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to 
her, and which was of setting so old-fashioned that she had 
not lately worn it, reset for her birthday. He therefore 
secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron safe in a 
cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more 
valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. 
Imagine his dismay when the jeweler in the Rue Vivienne 
to whom he carried it recognized the pretended diamonds as 
imitation paste which he himself had some days previously 


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229 


inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a Monsieur 
with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at 
that time in delicate health; and as the Due’s suspicions 
naturally fell on the servants, especially on the femme de 
cliamhre^ who was in great favor with his wife, he did not like 
to alarm Madame, nor through her to put the servants on 
their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the matter in 

the hands of the famous , who was then the pride 

and ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night 
afterwards the Vicomte de Maul4on was caught and appre- 
hended in the cabinet where the jewels were kept, and to 
which he had got access by a false key, or at least a duplicate 
key, found in his possession. I should observe that M. de 
Maul^on occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the 
upper rooms were devoted to the Due and Duchesse and their 
suite. As soon as this charge against the Vicomte was made 
known (and it was known the next morning), the extent of 
his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before scarcely con- 
jectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the 
medium of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for 
the crime of which he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, 
are subject to the most startling reactions of feeling. The men 
we adore one day we execrate the next. The Vicomte passed 
at once from the popular admiration one bestows on a hero, to 
the popular contempt with which one regards a petty larcener. 
Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into 
its bosom the gambler, the duelist, the Don Juan. However, 
one compensation in the way of amusement he might still 
afford to society for the grave iiyuries he had done it. Society 


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would attend his trial, witness his demeanor at the bar, and 
watch the expression of his face when he was sentenced to the 
galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch completed the measure 
of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The Due and 
Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Due instructed If'^ 
lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the 
Vicomte’s complete innocence of any other offense than that 
which he himself had confessed.” 

“ What did the Vicomte confess? you omitted to state that.” 

“ The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten 
by an insane passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on 
his presuming to declare it, met with indignant scorn, he had 
taken advantage of his lodgment in the same house to admit 
himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room by means 
of a key which he had procured made from an impression of 
the key-hole taken in wax. 

“ No evidence in support of any other charge against the 
Vicomte was forthcoming — nothing, in short, beyond the in- 
fraction du domicile caused by the madness of youthful love 
and for which there was no prosecution. The law, therefore, 
could have little to say against him. But society was more 
rigid ; and, exceedingly angry to find that a man who had 
been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, 
insisted on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the 
meaner, though not perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and 
fathers, the more heinous of the two offenses. I presume 
that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a dilemma from 
which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he 
left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. The sale 


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231 


.)f his stud and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for 
I will do him the justice to say that they were paid.” 

“ But though the Vicomte de Maul4on has disappeared, he 
must have left relations at Paris, who would perhaps know 
what has become of him and of his niece.” 

“ I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest 
was an old celihataire of the same name, from whom he had 
some expectations, but who died shortly after this esclaTidre^ 
and did not name the Vicomte in his will. M. Victor had 
numerous connections among the highest families — ^the Boche- 
briants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Beauvilliers. But they are not 
likely to have retained any connection with a ruined vaurien^ 
and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a draw- 
ing-master. But now you have given me a clue, I will try to 
follow it up. We must find the Vicomte, and I am not 
without hope of doing so. Pardon me if I decline to say 
more at present. I would not raise false expectations. But 
in a week or two I will have the honor to call again upon 
Monsieur.” 

“ Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering 
M. de Maul4on?” 

“ Yes. I cannot say more at present.” 

M. Benard departed. 

Still, that hope, however faint it might prove, served to re- 
animate Graham ; and with that hope his heart, as if a load 
had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to 
the thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early 
discharge of the commission connected with the discovery of 
Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura nearer to him, or at least 


232 


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to excuse his yearning desire to see more of her — to understand 
her better. Faded into thin air was the vague jealousy of 
Gustave Kameau which he had so unreasonably conceived ; 
he felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the “ On- 
dine of Paris” claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope 
to win an Isaura. He even forgot the friendship with the 
eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond, which a little while 
ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offense ; he remem- 
bered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent ; only 
the sweet voice which had for the first time breathed music 
into his own soul ; only the gentle hand whose touch had for 
the first time sent through his veins the thrill which distin- 
guishes from all her sex the woman whom we love. He went 
forth elated and joyous, and took his way to Isaura’s villa. 
As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he passed 
seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his 
own delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse : his own 
silent delight sympathized with all delight in awakening nature. 
The lover seeking reconciliation with the loved one from whom 
some trifle has unreasonably estranged him, in a cloudless day 
of May, — if he be not happy enough to feel a brotherhood in 
all things happy — a leaf in bloom, a bird in song, — then indeed 
he may call himself lover, but he does not know what is love. 


booik: IV. 


CHAPTEK L 

FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNII . 

It is many days since I wrote to you, and but for your 
delightful note just received, reproaching me for. silence, I 
should still be under the spell of that awe which certain words 
of M. Savarin were well fitted to produce. Chancing to ask 
him if he had written to you lately, he said, with that laugh 
of his, good-humoredly ironical, “ No, Mademoiselle, I am 
not one of the Fdcheux whom Moli^re has immortalized. If 
the meeting of lovers should be sacred from the intrusion of 
a third person, however amiable, more sacred still should be 
the parting between an author and his work. Madame de 
Grantmesnil is in that moment so solemn to a genius earnest 
as hers — she is bidding farewell to a companion with whom, 
once dismissed into the world, she can never converse famil- 
iarly again ; it ceases to be her companion when it becomes 
ours. Do not let us disturb the last hours they will pass 
togetjier.” 

These words struck me much. I suppose there is truth in 
them. I can comprehend that a work which has long been all 
in all to its author, concentrating his thoughts, gathering round 
it the hopes and fears of his inmost heart, dies, as it were, to 

233 


234 


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him when he has completed its life for others, and launched 
it into a world estranged from the solitude in which it was 
born and formed. I can almost conceive that, to a writer like 
you, the very fame which attends the work thus sent forth 
chills your own love for it. The characters you created in a 
fairy-land, known but to yourself, must lose something of 
their mysterious charm when you hear them discussed and 
caviled a , blamed or praised, as if they were really the crea- 
tures of streets and salons. 

I wonder if hostile criticism pains or enrages you as it 
seems to do such other authors as I have known. M. Savarin, 
for instance, sets down in his tablets as an enemy to whom 
vengeance is due the smallest scribbler who wounds his self- 
love, and says frankly, “ To me praise is food, dispraise is 
poison. Him who feeds me I pay ; him who poisons me I 
break on the wheel.” M. Savarin is, indeed, a skillful and 
energetic administrator to his own reputation. He deals with 
it as if it were a kingdom — establishes fortifications for its 
defense — enlists soldiers to fight for it. He is the soul and 
centre of a confederation in which each is bound to defend 
the territory of the others, and all those territories united 
constitute the imperial realm of M. Savarin. Don’t think 
me an ungracious satirist in what I am thus saying of our 
brilliant friend. It is not I who here speak ; it is himself. 
He avows his policy with the nviiveti which makes the (5harm 
of his style as writer. “ It is the greatest mistake,” he said 
to me yesterday, “ to talk of the Republic of Letters. Every 
author who wins a name is a sovereign in his own domain, be 
it large or small. Woe to any republican who wants to de- 


THE PARISIANS. 


235 


throne me !” Somehow or other, when M. Savarin thus 
talks I feel as if he were betraying the cause of genius. I 
cannot bring myself to regard literature as a craft — to me it 
is a sacred mission ; and in hearing this “ sovereign” boast of 
the tricks by which he maintains his state, I seem to listen to 
a priest who treats as 'imposture the religion he professes to 
teach. M. Savarin’s favorite eleve now is a young contributor 
to his journal, named Gustave Rameau. M. Savarin said the 
other day in my hearing, “ I and my set were Young France 
— Gustave Rameau and his set are New Paris. 

“ And what is the distinction between the one and the 
other ?” asked my American friend, Mrs. Morley. 

“ The set of ‘ Young France,’ ” answered M. Savarin, “had 
in it the hearty consciousness of youth ; it was bold and 
vehement, with abundant vitality and animal spirits; what- 
ever may be said against it in other respects, the power of 
thews and sinews must be conceded to its chief representa- 
tives. But the set of ‘New Paris’ has very bad health, and 
very indifferent spirits. Still, in its way, it is very clever ; it 
can sting and bite as keenly as if it were big and strong. 
Rameau is the most promising member of the set. He will 
be popular in his time, because he represents a good deal of 
the mind of his time — viz., the mind and the time of ‘New 
Paris.’” 

Do you know anything of this young Rameau’s writings ? 
You do not know himself, for he told me so, expressing a 
desire that was evidently very sincere to find some occasion 
on which to render you his homage. He said this the first 
time I met him at M. Savarin’s, and before he knew how dear 


236 


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to me are yourself and your fame. He came and sat by me 
after dinner, and won my interest at once by asking me if I 
had heard that you were busied on a new work ; and then, 
without waiting for my answer, he launched forth into praises 
of you, which made a notable contrast to the scorn with which 
he spoke of all your contemporaries, except indeed M. Savarin, 
who, however, might not have been pleased to hear his favorite 
pupil style him “ a great writer in small things.” I spare you 
his epigrams on Dumas and Victor Hugo and my beloved 
Lamartine. Though his talk was showy, and dazzled me at 
first, I soon got rather tired of it — even the first time we met. 
Since then I have seen him very often, not only at M. Savarin’s, 
but he calls here at least every other day, and we have become 
quite good friends. He gains on acquaintance so far, that 
one cannot help feeling how much he is to be pitied. He is 
so envious ! and the envious must be so unhappy. And then 
he is at once so near and so far from all the things that he 
envies. He longs for riches and luxury, and can only as yet 
earn a bare competence by his labors. Therefore he hates 
the rich and luxurious. His literary successes, instead of 
pleasing him, render him miserable by their contrast with the 
fame of the authors whom he envies and assails. He has a 
beautiful head, of which he is conscious, but it is joined to a 
body without strength or grace. He is conscious of this too : 
but it is cruel to go on with this sketch. You can see at 
once the kind of person who, whether he inspire affection or 
dislike, cannot fail to create an interest — painful but compas- 
sionate. 

You will be pleased to hear that Dr. C. considers my health 


THE PARISIANS. 


237 


fio improved that I may next year enter fairly on the profes- 
sion for which I was intended and trained.. Yet I still feel 
hesitating and doubtful. To give myself wholly up to the 
art in which I am told I could excel, must alienate me entirely 
from the ambition that yearns for fields in which, alas ! it may 
perhaps never appropriate to itself a rood for culture — only 
wander, lost in a vague fairy-land, to which it has not the 
fairy’s birthright. 0 thou great Enchantress, to whom are 
equally subject the streets of Paris and the realm of Faerie — 
thou who hast sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean 
called “practical human life,” and hast taught the acutest of 
its navigators to consider how far its courses are guided by 
orbs in heaven — canst thou solve this riddle, which, if it per- 
plexes me, must perplex so many ? What is the real distinc- 
tion between the rare genius and the commonalty of human 
souls that feel to the quick all the grandest and divinest things 
which the rare genius places before them, sighing within them- 
selves, “ This rare genius does but express that which was 
previously familiar to us, so far as thought and sentiment ex- 
tend ” ? Nay, the genius itself, however eloquent, never does, 
never can, express the whole of the thought or the sentiment 
it interprets ; on the contrary, the greater the genius is, the 
more it leaves a something of incomplete satisfaction on our 
minds — it promises so much more than it performs, it implies 
so much more than it announces. I am impressed with the 
truth of what I thus say in proportion as I reperuse and re- 
study the greatest writers that have come within my narrow 
range of reading. And by the greatest writers I mean those 
who are not exclusively reasoncrs (of such I cannot judge), 


238 


THE PARISIANS. 


nor mere poets (of whom, so far as concerns the union of words 
with music, I ought to be able to judge), but the few who 
unite reason and poetry and appeal at once to the common 
sense of the multitude and the imagination of the few. The 
highest type of this union to me is Shakspeare ; and I can 
comprehend the justice of no criticism on him which does not 
allow this sense of incomplete satisfaction augmenting in pro- 
portion as the poet soars to his highest. I ask again. In what 
consists this distinction between the rare genius and the com- 
monalty of minds that exclaim, “ He expresses what we feel, 
but never the whole of what we feel ” ? Is it the mere power 
over language, a large knowledge of dictionaries, a finer ear 
for period and cadence, a more artistic craft in casing our 
thoughts and sentiments in well-selected words ? Is it true 
what Buffbn says, “ that the style is the man ” ? Is it true 
what I am told Goethe said, “Poetry is form”? I cannot 
believe this ; and if you tell me it is true, then I no longer 
pine to be a writer. But if it be not true, explain to me how 
it is that the greatest genius is popular in proportion as it 
makes itself akin to us by uttering in better words than we 
employ that which was already within us, brings to light what 
in our souls was latent, and does but correct, beautify, and 
publish the correspondence which an ordinary reader carries 
on privately every day between himself and his mind or his 
heart. If this superiority in the genius be but style and form, 
I abandon my dream of being something else than a singer 
of words by another to the music of another. But then, what 
then ? My knowledge of books and art is wonderfully small. 
What little I do know I gather from very few books, and fn iu 


THE PARISIANS. 


239 


what I hear said by the few worth listening to whom I happen 
to meet ; and out of these, in solitude and reverie, not by con- 
scious effort, I arrive a*t some results which appear to my 
inexperience original. Perhaps, indeed, they have the same 
kind of originality as the musical compositions of amateurs 
who effect a cantata or a quartette made up of borrowed de- 
tails from great masters and constituting a whole so original 
that no real master would deign to own it. Oh, if I could 
get you to understand how unsettled, how struggling, my whole 
nature at this moment is ! I wonder what is the sensation ol 
the chrysalis which has been a silkworm, when it first feels 
the new wings stirring within its shell — wings, alas ! that are 
but those of the humblest and shortest-lived sort of moth, 
scarcely born into daylight before it dies. Could it reason, 
it might regret its earlier life, and say, “ Better be the silk- 
worm than the moth.” 

From the Same to the Same. 

Have you known well any English people in the course of 
your life ? I say well, for you must have had acquaintance 
with many. But it seems to me so difficult to know an Eng- 
lishman well. Even I, who so loved and revered Mr. Selby — 
I, whose childhood was admitted into his companionship by 
that love which places ignorance and knowledge, infancy and 
age, upon ground so equal that heart touches heart — cannot 
say that I understand the English character to anything like 
the extent to which I fancy I understand the Italian and the 
French. Between us of the Continent and them of the island 
the British Channel always flows. There is an Englishman 


240 


THE PARISIANS. 


here to whom I have been introduced, whom I have met, 
though but seldom, in that society which bounds tlie Paris 
world to me. Pray, pray tell me, did you ever know, ever 
meet him ? His name is Grraham Vane. He is the only son, 
I am told, of a man who was a ciUhrite in England as an orator 
and statesman, and on both sides he belongs to the haute aris- 
tocratie. He himself has that indescribable air and mien to 
which we apply the epithet “distinguished.” In the most 
crowded salon the eye would fix on him and involuntarily 
follow his movements. Yet his manners are frank and simple, 
wholly without the stiffness or reserve which are said to char- 
acterize the English. There is an inborn dignity in his bearing 
which consists in the absence of all dignity assumed. But 
what strikes me most in this Englishman is an expression of 
countenance which the English depict by the word “open” — 
that expression which inspires you with a belief in the ex- 
istence of sincerity. Mrs. Morley said of him, in that poetic 
extravagance of phrase by which the Americans startle the 
English, “ That man’s forehead would light up the Mammoth 
Cave.” Do you not know, Eulalie, what it is to us cultivators 
of art — ^art being the expression of truth through fiction — to 
come into the atmosphere of one of those souls in which Truth 
stands out bold and beautiful in itself and needs no idealiza- 
tion through fiction? Oh, how near we should be to heaven 
could we live daily, hourly, in the presence of one the honesty 
of whose word we could never doubt, the authority of whose 
word we could never disobey! Mr. Vane professes not to 
understand music — not even to care for it, except rarely — 
and yet he spoke of its influence over others with an enthu- 


THE PARISIANS. 


241 


siasm that half charmed me once more back to my destined 
calling — nay, might have charmed me wholly, but that he 
seemed to think that I — that any public singer — must be a 
creature apart from the world — the world in which such men 
live. Perhaps that is true. 


CHAPTER II. 

It was one of those lovely noons toward the end of May in 
which a rural suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him 
who escapes awhile from the streets of a crowded capital. The 
Londoner knows its charm when he feels his tread on the soft- 
ening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at Richmond 
under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the 
warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him 
the brief trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris 
are, I think, a yet more pleasing relief from the metropolis ; 
they are more easily reached, and I know not why, but they 
seem more rural, perhaps because the contrast of their repose 
with the stir left behind — of their redundance of leaf and 
blossom, compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the 
Boulevards and Tuileries — is more striking. However that 
may be, when Graham reached the pretty suburb in which 
Isaura dwelt, it seemed to him as if all the wheels of the loud 
busy life were suddenly smitten still. The hour was yet early ; 
he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home. The garden- 
gate stood unfastened and ajar ; he pushed it aside and entered. 

VoL, I. — I. 16 


242 


THE PARISIANS. 


I think I have before said that the garden of the villa was 
shut out from the road, and the gaze of neighbors, by a wall 
and thick belts of evergreens ; it stretched behind the house 
somewhat far for the garden of a suburban villa. He paused 
when he had passed the gateway, for he heard in the distance 
the voice of' one singing — singing low, singing plaintively. 
He knew it was the voice of Isaura ; he passed on, leaving the 
house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the 
singer. 

Isaura was seated within an arbor towards the farther end 
of the garden — an arbor which, a little later in the year, must 
indeed be delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine 
and woodbine ; now into its iron trellis-work leaflet and flowers 
were insinuating their gentle way. Just at the entrance one 
white rose — a winter rose that had mysteriously survived its 
relations — opened its pale hues frankly to the noonday sun. 
Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of 
the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the 
arbor. Isaura did not perceive him at first, for her face was 
bent downward musingly, as was often her wont after singing, 
especially when alone. But she felt that the place was dark- 
ened, that something stood between her and the sunshine. 
She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she 
uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly, 
and whisperingly, as in a sort of fear. 

“ Pardon me. Mademoiselle,” said Graham, entering; “ but 
I heard your voice as I came into the garden, and it drew me 
onward involuntarily. What a lovely air ! and what simple 
sweetness in such of the words as reached me! I am so 


THE PARISIANS. 


243 


ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if I ask 
whose is the music and whose are the words. Probably both 
are so well known as to convict me of a barbarous ignorance.” 

“Oh, no,” said Isaura, with a still heightened color, and in 
accents embarrassed and hesitating. “Both the words and 
music are by an unknown and very humble composer, yet not, 
indeed, quite original; they have not even that merit — at 
least they were suggested by a popular song in the Neapolitan 
dialect which is said to be very old.” 

“ I don’t know if I caught the true meaning of the words, 
for they seemed to me to convey a more subtle and refined 
sentiment than is common in the popular songs of Southern 
Italy.” 

“ The sentiment in the original is changed in the paraphrase, 
and not, I fear, improved by the change.” 

“ Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let 
me judge which I prefer ?” 

“ In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has 
moored his boat under a rock on the shore, sees a beautiful 
face below the surface of the waters ; he imagines it to be that 
of a Nereid, and casts in his net to catch this supposed nymph 
of the ocean. He only disturbs the water, loses the image, 
and brings up a few common fishes. He returns home dis- 
appointed, and very much enamored of the supposed Nereid. « 
The next day he goes again to the same place, and discovers 
that the face which had so charmed him was that of a mortal 
girl reflected on the waters from the rock behind him, on 
which she had been seated, and on which she had her home. 
The original air is arch and lively ; just listen to it,” And 


244 


THE PARISIANS. 


Isaura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre 
tunes to which light-stringed instruments are the fitting ac- 
companiment. 

“ That,” said Graham, “ is a different music indeed from 
the other, which is deep and plaintive and goes to the heart.” 

“ But do you not see how the words have been altered ? In 
the song you first heard me singing, the fisherman goes again 
to the spot, again and again sees the face in the water, again 
and again seeks to capture the Nereid, and never knows to the 
last that the face was that of the mortal on the rock close 
behind him, and which he passed by without notice every 
day. Deluded by an ideal image, the real one escapes from 
his eye.” 

“ Is the verse that is recast meant to symbolize a moral in 
love?” 

“ In love ? nay, I know not ; but in life, yes — at least the 
life of the artist.” 

“ The paraphrase of the original is yours, Signorina — 
words and music both. Am I not right? Your silence 
answers, ‘Yes.’ Will you pardon me if I say that, though 
there can be no doubt of the new beauty you have given to 
the old song, I think that the moral of the old was the sounder 
one, the truer to human life? We do not go on to the last 
•duped by an illusion. If enamored by the shadow on the 
waters, still we do look around us and discover the image it 
reflects.” 

Isaura shook her head gently, but made no answer. On 
the table before her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one 
or two b\ids from the last winter rose, which she had been 


THE PARISIANS. 


245 


arranging into a simple nosegay; she took up these, and 
abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the rose-leaves. 

“Despise the coming May flowers if you will, they will 
soon be so plentiful,” said Graham ; “ but do not cast away 
the few blossoms which winter has so kindly spared, and 
which even summer will not give again;” and, placing his 
hand on the winter buds, it touched hers — lightly, indeed, 
but she felt the touch, shrank from it, colored, and rose from 
her seat. 

“ The sun has left this side of the garden, the east wind is 
rising, and you must find it chilly here,” she said, in an 
altered tone. “ Will you not come into the house?” 

“ It is not the air that I feel chilly,” said Graham, with a 
half-smile ; “ I almost fear that my prosaic admonitions have 
displeased you.” 

“They were not prosaic; and they were kind and very 
wise,” she added, with her exquisite laugh — laugh so won- 
derfully sweet and musical. She now had gained the entrance 
of the arbor; Graham joined her, and they walked towards 
the house. He asked her if she had seen much of the 
Savarins since they had met. 

“ Once or twice we have been there of an evening.” 

“ And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious young min- 
strel who despises Tasso and Corneille ?” 

“ M. Kameau ? Oh, yes ; he is constantly at the Savarins’. 
Do not be severe on him. He is unhappy — he is struggling 
— he is soured. An artist has thorns in his path which 
lookers-on do not heed.” 

“ All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great 


246 


THE PARISIANS. 


respect for those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever 
they are scratched. But M. Bameau seems to me one of 
those writers very common nowadays in France, and even in 
England ; writers who have never read anything worth study- 
ing, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their 
ignorance. I should not have thought an artist like yourself 
could have recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises 
Tasso without knowing Italian.” 

Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous. 

“ Are you not an artist yourself? Are you not a writer ? 
M. Savarin told me you were a distinguished man of letters.” 

“ M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not an artist, 
and I have a great dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed 
and vulgarized in England and in France. A cook calls him- 
self an artist ; a tailor does the same ; a man writes a gaudy 
melodrama, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel, and straight- 
way he calls himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic jar- 
gon about ‘ essence’ and ‘ form,’ assuring us that a poet we can 
understand wants essence, and a poet we can sca^ wants form. 
Thank heaven I am not vain enough to call myself artist. I 
have written some very dry lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly 
political, or critical upon other subjects than art. But why, 
d propos of M. Rameau, did you ask me that question respect- 
ing myself?” 

“ Because much in your conversation,” answered Isaura, in 
rather a mournful tone, “ made me suppose you had more 
sympathies with art and its cultivators than you cared to 
avow. And if you had such sympathies, you would compre- 
hend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like myself to 


THE PARISIANS. 


247 


eomo into communication with those who devote themselves 
to any art distinct from the common pursuits of the world ; 
what a relief it is to escape from the ordinary talk of society. 
There is a sort of instinctive freemasonry among us, including 
masters and disciples, and one art has a fellowship with other 
arts ; mine is but song and music, yet I feel attracted towards 
a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a poet, as much as 
towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why I can- 
not contemn M. Rameau as you do ? I differ from his tastes 
in literature ; I do not much admire such of his writings as I 
have read; I grant that he overestimates his own genius, 
whatever that be : yet I like to converse with him : he is a 
struggler upward, though with weak wings, or with erring 
footsteps, like myself.” 

“ Mademoiselle,” said Graham, earnestly, “ I cannot say 
how I thank you for this candor. Do not condemn me for 
abusing it — if ” He paused. 

“If what?” 

“ If I, so much older than yourself — I do not say only in 
years, but in the experience of life — I, whose lot is cast among 
those busy and ‘ positive’ pursuits which necessarily quicken 
that unromantic faculty called common sense — if, I say, the 
deep interest with which you must inspire all whom you admit 
into an acquaintance, even as unfamiliar as that now between 
us, makes me utter one caution, such as might be uttered by 
a friend or brother. Beware of those artistic sympathies 
which you so touchingly confess ; beware how, in the great 
events of life, you allow fancy to misguide your reason. In 
choosing friends on whom to rely, separate the artist from the 


248 


THE PARISIANS. 


human being. Judge of the human being for what it is in 
itself. Do not worship the face on the waters, blind to tlie 
image on the rock. In one word, never see in an artist like 
a M. Kanieau the human being to whom you could intrust 
the destinies of your life. Pardon me, pardon me ; we may 
meet little hereafter, but you are a creature so utterly new to 
me, so wholly unlike any woman 1 have ever before encoun- 
tered and admired, and to me seem endowed with such wealth 

of mind- and soul, exposed to such hazard, that — that ” 

again he paused, and his voice trembled as he concluded — 
“ that it would be a deep sorrow to me if' perhaps years hence, 
I should have to say, ‘ Alas ! by what mistake has that wealth 
been wasted!’ ” 

4 

While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had 
turned away from the house, and were again standing before 
the arbor. 

Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjuration, had not 
till now looked into the face of the companion by his side. 
Now, when he had concluded, and heard no reply, he bent 
down, and saw that Isaura was weeping silently. 

His heart smote him. 

“ Forgive me,” he exclaimed, drawing her hand into his ; 

I have had no right to talk thus ; but it was not from want 
of respect ; it was — it was ” ; 

The hand which was yielded to his pressed it gently, timidly, 
chastely. 

“Forgive!” murmured Isaura; “do you think that I, an 
orphan, have never longed for a friend who would speak to 
me thus?” And, so saying, she lifted her eyes, streaming 


THE PARISIANS. 


249 


Btill, to his bended countenance — eyes, despite their tears, so 
clear in their innocent limpid beauty, so ingenuous, so frank, 
so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of “ any other woman he had 
encountered and admired.” 

“ Alas !” he said, in quick and hurried accents, “ you may 
remember, when we have before conversed, how I, though so 
uncultured in your art, still recognized its beautiful influence 
upon human breasts ; how I sought to combat your own 
depreciation of its rank among the elevating agencies of 
humanity ; how, too, I said that no man could venture to ask 
you to renounce the boards, the lamps — resign the fame of 
actress, of singer. Well, now that you accord to me the title 
of friend, now that you so touchingly remind me that you are 
an orphan — thinking of all the perils the young and the 
beautiful of your sex must encounter when they abandon 
private life for public — I think that a true friend might 
put the question, ‘ Can you resign the fame of actress, of 
singer ?’ ” 

“I will answer you frankly. The profession which once 
seemed to me so alluring began to lose its charms in my eyes 
some months ago. It was your words, very eloquently ex- 
pressed, on the ennobling effects of music and song upon a 
popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste to 
rendering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage. But 
now I think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice 
interpreted the voice of my own heart and bade me relinquish 
the career of actress.” 

Graham’s face grew radiant. But whatever might have 
been his reply was arrested ; voices and footsteps were heard 

L* 


250 


THE PARISIANS. 


behind. He turned round, and saw the Venosta, the Savarins, 
and Gustave Rameau. 

Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of alarmed con- 
fusion, and then instinctively retreated towards the arbor. 

Graham hurried on to meet the Signora and the visitors, 
giving time to Isaura to compose herself by arresting them in 
the pathway with conventional salutations. 

A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and there was talk 
to which Graham scarcely listened, though he shared in it, by 
abstracted monosyllables. He declined going into the house, 
and took leave at the gate. In parting, his eyes fixed them- 
selves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau was by her side. That 
nosegay which had been left in the arbor was in her hand ; 
and though she was’ bending over it, she did not now pluck 
and scatter the rose-leaves. Graham at that moment felt no 
jealousy* of the fair-faced young poet beside her. 

As he walked slowly back, he muttered to himself, “ But 
am I yet in the position to hold myself wholly free ? Am I, 
am I ? Were the sole choice before me that between her and 
ambition and wealth, how soon it would be made ! Ambition 
has no prize equal to the heart of such a woman, wealth no 
sources of joy equal to the treasures of her love.” 


I. 


CHAPTER III. 

FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL. 

The day after I posted my last, Mr. Vane called on us. I 
was in our little garden at tlie time. Our conversation was 
brief, and soon interrupted by visitors — the Savarins and M. 
Rameau. I long for your answer. I wonder how he impressed 
you, if you have met him ; how he would impress, if you 
met him now. To me he is so different from all others ; and 
I scarcely know why his words ring in my ears and his image 
rests in my thoughts. It is strange altogether ; for, though 
he is young, he speaks to me as if he were so much older than 
I — so kindly, so tenderly, yet as if I were a child, and much 
as the dear Maestro might do if he thought I needed caution 
or counsel. Do not fancy, Eulalie, that there is any danger 
of my deceiving myself as to the nature of such interest as he 
may take in me. Oh, no ! There is a gulf between us there 
which he does not lose sight of, and which we could not pass. 
How, indeed, I could interest him at all I cannot guess. A 
rich, high-born Englishman, intent on political life ; practical, 
prosaic — no, not prosaic ; but still with the kind of sense which 
does not admit into its range of vision that world of dreams 
which is* familiar as their daily home to Romance and to Art. 
It has always seemed to me that for love, love such as I con- 
ceive it, there must be a deep and constant sympathy between 

251 


252 


THE PARISIANS. 


two persons — not, indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles of 
taste and sentiment, but in those essentials which form the 
root of character, and branch out in all the leaves and blooms 
that expand to the sunshine and shrink from the cold, — that 
the worldling should wed the worldling, the artist the artist. 
Can the realist and the idealist blend together, and hold to- 
gether till death and beyond death ? If not, can there be true 
love between them ? By true love I mean the love which 
interpenetrates the soul, and, once given, can never die. Oh, 
Eulalie — answer me — answer ! 

P. S . — I have now fully made up my mind to renounce all 
thought of the stage. 

From Madame de Grantmesnil to Isaura Cicogna. 

My dear Child. — How your mind has grown since you 
left me, the sanguine and aspiring votary of an art which, of 
all ai-ts, brings the most immediate reward to a successful cul- 
tivator, and is in itself so divine in its immediate effects upon 
human souls ! Who shall say what may be the after-results 
of those effects which the waiters on posterity presume to de- 
spise because they are immediate? A dull man, to whose 
mind a ray of that vague starlight undetected in the atmos- 
phere of workday life has never yet traveled ; to whom the 
philosopher, the preacher, the poet, appeal in vain — nay, to 
whom the conceptions of the grandest master of instrumental 
music are incomprehensible ; to whom Beethoven unlocks no 
portal in heaven ; to whom Rossini has no mysteries *on earth 
unsolved by the critics of the pit, — suddenly hears the human 
voice of the human singer, and at the sound of that voice the 


THE PARISIANS. 


253 


walls which inclosed him fall. The something far from and 
beyond the routine of his commonplace existence becomes 
known to him. He of himself, poor man, can make nothing 
of it. He cannot put it down on paper, and say the next 
morning, “ I am an inch nearer to heaven than I was last night ; ” 
but the feeling that he is an inch nearer to heaven abides with 
him. Unconsciously he is gentler, he is less earthly, and in 
being nearer to heaven he is stronger for earth. You singers 
do not seem to me to understand that you have — to use your 
own word, so much in vogue that it has become abused and 
trite — a mission! When you talk of missions, from whom 
comes the mission ? Not from men. If there be a ihission 
from man to men, it must be appointed from on high. 

Think of all this ; and in being faithful to your art, be true 
to yourself. If you feel divided between that art and the art 
of the writer, and acknowledge the first to be too exacting to 
admit a rival, keep to that in which you are sure to excel. 
Alas, my fair child ! do not imagine that we writers feel a 
happiness in our pursuits and aims more complete than that 
which you can command. If we care for fame (and, to be 
frank, we all do), that fame does not come before us face to 
face — a real, visible, palpable form, as it does to the singer, 
to the actress. I grant that it may be more enduring, but an 
endurance on the length of which we dare not reckon. A 
■Jv^riter cannot be sure of immortality till his language itself be 
dead ; and then he has but a share in an uncertain lottery. 
Nothing but fragments remains of the Phrynichus, who rivaled 
jEschylus ; of the Agathon, who perhaps excelled Euripides ; 
of the Alcaeus, in whom Horace acknowledged a master and 


254 


THE PARISIANS. 


a modsl ; their renown is not in their works, it is but in their 
names. And, after all, the names of singers and actors last 
perhaps as long. Greece retains the name of Polus, Rome 
of Roscius, England of Garrick, France of Talma, Italy of 
Pasta, more lastingly than posterity is likely to retain mine. 
You address to me a question which I have often put to 
myself — “ What is the distinction between the writer and the 
reader, when the reader says, ‘ These are my though^ these 
are my feelings ; the writer has stolen them, and clothed them 
in his own words ’? ” And the more the reader says this, 
the more wide is the audience, the more genuine the renown, 
and, paradox though it seems, the more consummate the origi- 
nality, of the writer. But no, it is not the mere gift of 
expression, it is not the mere craft of the pen, it is not the mere 
taste in arrangement of word and cadence, which thus enables 
the one to interpret the mind, the heart, the soul of the many. 
It is a power breathed into him as he lay in his cradle, and 
a power that gathered around itself, as he grew up, all the 
influences he acquired, whether from observation of external 
nature, or from study of men and books, or from that experi- 
ence of daily life which varies with every human being. No 
education could make two intellects exactly alike, as no culture 
can make two leaves exactly alike. How truly you describe 
the sense of dissatisfaction which every writer of superior 
genius communicates to his admirers ! how truly do you feel 
that the greater is the dissatisfaction in proportion to the 
writer’s genius and the admirer’s conception of it ! But that 
is the mystery which makes — let me borrow a German phrase 
— the cloHd-laml between the finite and the infinite. The 


THE PARISIANS. 


255 


greatest pliilosopher, intent on the secrets of Nature, feels that 
dissatisfaction in Nature herself. The finite cannot reduce 
into logic and criticism the infinite. 

Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex the reason, and 
approach that which touches the heart — which in your case, 
my child, touches the heart of woman. You speak of love, 
and deem that the love which lasts — the household, the con- 
jugal ^ve — should be based upon such sympathies of pursuit 
that the artist should wed with the artist. 

This is one of the questions you do well to address to me ; 
for, whether from my own experience, or from that which I 
have gained from observation extended over a wide range of 
life and quickened and intensified by the class of writing that 
I cultivate, and which necessitates a calm study of the passions, 
I am an authority on such subjects, better than most women 
can be. And alas, my child 1 I come to this result : there is 
no prescribing to men or to women whom to select, whom to 
refuse. I cannot refute the axiom of the ancient poet, “ In 
love there is no wherefore.” But there is a time — it is often 
but a moment of time — in which love is not yet a master, in 
which we can say, “ I will love — I will tmt love.” 

Now, if I could find you in such a moment I would say to 
you, “ Artist, do not love — do not marry — an artist.” Two 
artistic natures rarely combine. The artistic nature is won- 
derfully exacting. I fear it is supremely egotistical — so jeal- 
ously sensitive that it writhes at the touch of a rival. Eacine 
was the happiest of husbands ; his wife adored his genius, 
but could not understand his plays. Would Eacine have been 
happy if he had married a Corneille in petticoats? I who 


256 


THE PARISIANS. 


speak have loved an artist, certainly equal to myself. I am 
sure that he loved me. That sympathy in pursuits of which 
you speak drew us together, and became very soon the cause 
of antipathy. To both of us the endeavor to coalesce was 
misery. 

I don’t know your M. Rameau. Savarin has sent me 
some of his writings ; from these I judge that his only 
chance of happiness would be to marry a comn^nplace 
woman, with se'pm'ation de, hiens. He is, believe me, but 
one of the many with whom New Paris abounds, who, be- 
cause they have the infirmities of genius, imagine they have 
its strength. 

I come next to the Englishman. I see how serious is your 
questioning about him. You not only regard him as a being 
distinct from the crowd of a sahn ; he stands equally apart 
in the chamber of your thoughts — you do not mention him 
in the same letter as that which treats of Rameau and Savarin. 
He has become already an image not to be lightly mixed up 
with others. You would rather not have mentioned him at 
all to me, but you could not resist it. The interest you feel 
in him so perplexed you, that in a kind of feverish impatience 
you cry out to me, “ Can you solve the riddle? Did you ever 
know well Englishmen ? Can an Englishman be understood 
out of his island ?” etc. etc. Yes, I have known well many 
Englishmen. In affairs of the heart they are much like all 
other men. No ; I do not know this Englishman in particu- 
lar, nor any one of his name. 

Well, my child, let us frankly grant that this foreigner has 
gained some hold on your thoughts, on your fancy, perhaps 


THE PARISIANS. 


257 


also on your heart. Do not fear that he will love you less 
enduringly, or that you will become alienated from him^ be- 
cause he is not an artist. If he be a strong nature, and with 
some great purpose in life, your ambition will fuse itself in 
his ; and knowing you as I do, I believe you would make an 
excellent wife to an Englishman whom you honored as well 
as loved ; and sorry though I should be that you relinquished 
the singer’s fame, I should be consoled in thinking you safe 
in the woman’s best sphere — a contented home, safe from 
calumny, safe from gossip. I never had that home ; and there 
has been no part in my author’s life in which I would not 
have given all the celebrity it won for the obscure common- 
place of such woman lot. Could I move human beings as 
pawns on a chess-board, I should indeed say that the most 
suitable and congenial mate for you, for a woman of sentiment 
and genius, would be a well-born and well-educated German ; 
for such a German unites, with domestic habits and a strong 
sense of family ties, a romance of sentiment, a love of art, a 
predisposition towards the poetic side of life which is very 
rare among Englishmen of the same class. But as the Ger- 
man is not forthcoming, I give my vote for the Englishman, 
provided only you love him. Ah, child, be sure of that. Do 
not mistake fancy for love. All women do not require love 
in marriage, but without it that which is best and highest in 
yoiA would wither and die. Write to me often, and tell me all. 
M. Savarin is right. My book is no longer my companion. 
It is gone from me, and I am once more alone in the world. — ■ 
Yours affectionately. 

P.JS . — Is not your postscript a woman’s? Does it not 
VoL. I. 17 


258 


THE PARISIANS. 


require a woman’s postscript in reply ? You say in yours 
tha^ you have fully made up your mind to renounce all 
thoughts of the stage. I ask in mine, “ What has the 
Englishman to do with that determination ?” 


CHAPTER IV. 

Some weeks have passed since Graham’s talk with Isaura 
in the garden ; he has not visited the villa since. His cousins 
the D’Altons have passed through Paris on their way to Italy, 
meaning to stay a few days ; they stayed nearly a month, and 
monopolized much of Graham’s companionship. Both these 
were reasons why, in the habitual society of the Duke, 
Graham’s persuasion that he was not yet free to court the 
hand of Isaura became strengthened, and with that persuasion 
necessarily came a question equally addressed to his conscience. 

“ If not yet free to court her hand, am I free to expose 
myself to the temptation of seeking to win her affection?” 
But when his cousin was gone, his heart began to assert its 
own rights, to argue its own case, and suggest modes of recon- 
ciling its dictates to the obligations which' seemed to oppose 
them. In this hesitating state of mind he received the fol- 
lowing note : — 


ViLMA , Lac d’Enghien. 

My dear Mr. Vane, — We have retreated from Paris to 
the banks of this beautiful little lake. Come and help to save 


THE PARISIANS. 


259 


Frank and myself from quarreling with each other, which, 
until the Rights of Women are firmly established, married 
folks always will do when left to themselves, especially if they 
are still lovers, as Frank and I are. Love is a terribly quar- 
relsome thing. Make us a present of a few days out of your 
wealth of time. We will visit Montmorency and the haunts 
of Rousseau — sail on the lake at moonlight — dine at gypsy 
restaurants under trees not yet embrowned by summer heats — 
discuss literature and politics — “ Shakspeare and the musical 
glasses” — and be as sociable and pleasant as Boccaccio’s tale- 
tellers at Fiesole. We shall be but a small party, only the 
Savarins, that unconscious sage and humorist Signora Venosta, 
and that dimple-cheeked Isaura, who embodies the song of 
nightingales and the smile of summer. Refuse, and Frank 
shall not have an easy moment till he sends in his claims for 
thirty millions against the Alabama. — Yours, as you behave. 

Lizzie Morley. 

Graham did not refuse. He went to Enghien for four days 
and a quarter. He was under the same roof as Isaura. Oh, 
those happy days ! — so happy that they defy description. But 
though to Graham the happiest days he had ever known, they 
were happier still to Isaura. There were- drawbacks to his 
happiness, none to hers, — drawbacks partly from reasons the 
weight of which the reader will estimate later, partly from 
reasons the reader may at once comprehend and assess. In 
the sunshine of her joy, all th^ vivid colorings of Isaura’s 
artistic temperament came forth, so that what I may call the 
homely, domestic woman-side of her nature faded into shadow. 
If, my dear reader, whether you be man or woman, you have 
come into familiar contact with some creature of a genius to 
which, even assuming that you yourself have a genius in its 


260 


THE PARISIANS. 


own way, you have no special affinities, have you not felt shy 
with that creature? Have you not, perhaps, felt how in- 
tensely you could love that creature, and doubted if that 
creature could possibly love you ? Now, I think that shyness 
and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if, 
however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she 
recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it. And yet this self- 
abasement is exceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of 
genius is so grandly indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows 
with such unaffected modesty to the superiority in which it 
fears it may fail (yet seldom does fail) — the superiority of 
common sense. And when we come to women, what marvel- 
ous truth is conveyed by the woman who has had no superior 
in intellectual gifts among her own sex ! Corinne, crowned 
at the Capitol, selects out of the whole world, as the hero of 
her love, no rival poet and enthusiast, but a cold-blooded 
sensible Englishman. 

Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form of intellect— 
Graham Vane, from whom I hope much, if he live to fulfill his 
rightful career — had, not unreasonably, the desire to dominate 
the life of the woman whom he selected as the partner of his 
own. But .the life of Isaura seemed to escape him. If at 
moments, listening to her, he would say to himself, “ What a 
companion ! — life could never be dull with her” — at other 
moments he would say, “ True, never dull, but would it be 
always safe ?” And then comes in that mysterious power of 
love which crushes all beneath its feet, and makes us end self- 
commune by that abject submission of reason, which only 
murmurs, “ Better be unhappy with the one you love, than 


THE PARISIANS. 


261 


happy with one whom you do not.” All such self-communea 
were unknown to Isaura. She lived in the bliss of the hour. 
If Graham could have read her heart, he would have dismissed 
all doubt whether he could dominate her life. Could a Fate 
or an angel have said to her, “ Choose, — on one side I promise 
you the glories of a Catalani, a Pasta, a Sappho, a De Stael, a 
George Sand — all combined into one immortal name ; or, on 
the other side, the whole heart of the man who would estrange 
himself from you if you had such combination of glories” — 
her answer would have brought Graham Vane to her feet ; all 
scruples, all doubts, would have vanished, he would have ex- 
claimed, with the generosity inherent in the higher order of 
man, “ Be glorious, if your nature wills it so. Glory enough 
to me that you would have resigned glory itself to become 
mine.” But how is it that men worth a woman’s loving 
become so diffident when they love intensely ? Even in ordi- 
nary cases of love there is so ineffable a delicacy in virgin 
woman, that a man, be he how refined soever, feels himself 
rough and rude and coarse in comparison. And while that 
sort of delicacy was pre-eminent in this Italian orphan, there 
came, to increase the humility of the man so proud and so 
confident in himself when he had only men to deal with, the 
consciousness that his intellectual nature was hard and positive 
beside the angel-like purity and the fairy-like play of hers. 

There was a strong wish on the part of Mrs. Morley to bring 
about the union of these' two. She had a great regard and a 
great admiration for both. To her mind, unconscious of all 
Graham’s doubts and prejudices, they were exactly suited to 
each other. A man of intellect so cultivated as Graham’s, if 


262 


THE PARISIANS. 


married to a commonplace English ‘ Miss/ would surely feel 
as if life had no sunshine and no flowers. The love of an 
Isaura would steep it in sunshine, pave it with flowers. Mrs. 
Morley admitted — ^all American republicans of gentle birth do 
admit — the instincts which lead “ like” to match with “like,” 
an equality of blood and race. With all her assertion of the 
Rights of Woman, I do not think that Mrs. Morley would 
ever have conceived the possibility of consenting that the 
richest and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could 
become the wife of a son of hers, if the girl had the taint of 
negro blood, even though shown nowhere save in the slight dis- 
tinguishing hue of her finger-nails. So, had Isaura’ s merits 
been threefold what they were, and she had been the wealthy 
heiress of a retail grocer, this fair republican would have 
opposed (more strongly than many an English duchess, or at 
least a Scotch duke, would do, the wish of a son) the thought 
of an alliance between Graham Vane and the grocer’s daughter! 
Rut Isaura was a Cicogna — an offspring of a very ancient and 
very noble house. Disparities of fortune or mere worldly 
position Mrs. Morley supremely despised. Here were the 
great parities of alliance — parities in years and good looks and 
mental culture. So, in short, she, in the invitation given to 
them, had planned for the union between Isaura and Graham. 

To this plan she had an antagonist, whom she did not even 
guess, in Madame Savarin. That lady, as much attached to 
Isaura as was Mrs. Morley herself, and still more desirous of 
seeing a girl, brilliant and parentless, transferred from the 
companionship of Signora Venosta to the protection of a hus- 
band, entertained no belief in the serious attentions of Gra- 


THE PARISIANS. 


263 


ham Vane. Perhaps she exaggerated his worldly advantages 
— perhaps she undervalued the warmth of his affections ; but 
it was not within the range of her experience, confined much 
to Parisian life, nor in harmony with her notions of the 
frigidity and morgue of the English national character, that a 
rich and high-born young man, to whom a great career in 
practical public life was predicted, should form a matrimonial 
alliance with a foreign orphan girl, who, if of gentle birth, 
had no useful connections, would bring no correspondent dot^ 
and had been reared and intended for the profession of the 
stage. She much more feared that the result of any atten- 
tions on the part of such a man would be rather calculated 
to compromise the orphan’s name, or at least to mislead her 
expectations, than to secure her the shelter of a wedded home. 
Moreover, she had cherished plans of her own for Isaura’s 
future. Madame Savarin had conceived for Gustave Rameau 
a friendly regard, stronger than that which Mrs. Morley en- 
tertained for Graham Vane, for it was more motherly. Gus- 
tave had been familiarized to her sight and her thoughts since 
he had first been launched into the literary world under her 
husband’s auspices ; he had confided to her his mortification 
in his failures, his joy in his successes. His beautiful coun- 
tenance, his delicate health, his very infirmities and defects, 
had endeared him to her womanly heart. Isaura was the 
wife of all others who, in Madame Savarin’s opinion, was 
made for Rameau. Her fortune, so trivial beside the wealth 
of the Englishman, would be a competence to Rameau ; then 
that competence might swell into vast riches if Isaura suc- 
ceeded on the stage. She found with extreme displeasure 


264 


THE PARISIANS. 


that Isaura’s mind had become estranged from the profession 
to which she had been destined, and divined that a deference 
to the Englishman’s prejudices had something to do with that 
estrangement. It was not to be expected that a Frenchwoman, 
wife to a sprightly man of letters, who had intimate friends 
and allies in every department of the artistic world, sliould 
cherish any prejudice whatever against the exercise of an art 
in which success achieved riches and renown. But she was 
prejudiced, as most Frenchwomen are, against allowing to un- 
married girls the same freedom and independence of action 
that are the rights of women — French women — when married. 
And she would have disapproved the entrance of Isaura on 
her professional career until she could enter it as a wife — the 
wife of an artist — the wife of Gustave Bameau. 

Unaware of the rivalry between these friendly diplomatists 
and schemers, Grraham and Isaura glided hourly more and 
more down the current, which as yet ran smooth. No words 
by which love is spoken were exchanged between them ; in 
fact, though constantly together, they were very rarely, and 
then but for -moments, alone with each other. Mrs. Morley 
artfully schemed more than once to give them such opportu- 
nities for that mutual explanation of heart which, she saw, 
had not yet taken place ; with art more practiced and more 
watchful, Madame Savarin contrived to baffle her hostess’s in- 
tention. But, indeed, neither Graham nor Isaura sought to 
make opportunities for themselves. He, as we know, did not 
deem himself wholly justified in uttering the words of love 
by which a man of honor binds himself for life ; and she ! — 
what girl, pure-hearted and loving truly, does not shrink from 


THE PARISIANS. 


265 


seeking tlie opportunities which it is for the man to court ? 
Yet Isaura needed no words to tell her that she was loved — 
no, nor even a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eye ; she 
felt it instinctively, mysteriously, by the glow of her own 
being in the presence of her lover. She knew that she her- 
self could not so love unless she were beloved. 

Here woman’s wit is keener and truthfuller than man’s. 
Graham, as I have said, did not feel confident that he had 
reached the heart of Isaura : he was conscious that he had 
engaged her interest, that he had attracted her fancy ; but 
often, when charmed by the joyous play of her imagination, 
he would sigh to himself, “ To natures so gifted what single 
mortal can be the all in all ?” 

They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the 
beautiful neighborhood, dined early, and sailed on the calm 
lake at moonlight. Their talk was such as might be expected 
from lovers of books in summer holidays. Savarin was a 
critic by profession ; Graham V ane, if not that, at least owed 
such literary reputation as he had yet gained to essays in 
which the rare critical faculty was conspicuously developed. 

It was plhasant to hear the clash of these two minds en- 
... countering each other ; they differed perhaps less in opinions 
than in the mode by which opinions are discussed. The 
Englishman’s range of reading was wider than the French- 
man’s, and his scholarship more accurate ; but the Frenchman 
had a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble 
grace, whether in the advancing or the retreat of his argu- 
ment, which covered deficiencies and often made them appear 
like merits. Graham was compelled, indeed, to relinquish 
VOL. 1.— M 


266 


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many of the forces of superior knowledge or graver eloquence, 
which, with less lively antagonists, he could have brought 
into the field, for the witty sarcasm of Savarin would have 
turned them aside as pedantry or declamation. But though 
Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the happiness at his 
heart brought out the gayety of humor which had been his 
early characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse 
genial and playful, — still there was this distinction between 
his humor and Savarin’ s wit, that in the first there was always 
something earnest, in the last always something mocking. 
And in criticism Graham seemed ever anxious to bring out a 
latent beauty, even in writers comparatively neglected. Sava- 
rin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never before 
discovered in writers universally read. 

Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with 
which Isaura listened to him in these intellectual skirmishes 
with the more glittering Parisian. There was this distinction 
she made between him and Savarin : when the last spoke she 
often chimed in with some happy sentiment of her own ; but 
she never interrupted Graham — never intimated a dissent 
from his theories of art, or the deductions he drew*from them ; 
and she would remain silent and thoughtfurfor some minutes 
when his voice ceased. There was passing from his mind 
into hers an ambition which she imagined, poor girl, that he 
would be pleased to think he had inspired, and which might 
become a new bond of sympathy between them. But as yet 
the ambition was vague and timid — an idea or a dream to be 
fulfilled in some indefinite future. 

The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, 


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267 


after staying out on tlie lake to a later hour than usual, stood 
lingering still on the lawn of the villa ; and their host, who 
was rather addicted to superficial studies of the positive sci- 
ences; including, of course, the most popular of all, astronomy, 
kept his guests politely listening to speculative conjectures on 
the probable size of the inhabitants of SiriuS — that very dis- 
tant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led phi- 
losophers into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignifi- 
cance of our own poor little planet, capable of producing 
nothing greater than Shakspeares and Newtons, Aristotles 
and Caesars — manikins, no doubt, beside intellects propor- 
tioned to the size of the world in which they flourish. 

As it chanced, Isaura and Graham were then standing 
close to each othei* and a little apart from the rest. “ It is 
very strange,” said Graham, laughing low, “how little I care 
about Sirius. He is the sun of some other system, and is 
perhaps not habitable at all, except by salamanders. He can- 
not be one of the stars with which I have established familiar 
acquaintance, associated with fancies and dreams and hopes, 
as most of us do, for instance, with Hesperus, the moon’s 
harbinger afid comrade. But amid all those stars there is 
one — not Hesperus — which has always had, from my child- 
hood, a mysterious fascination for me. Knowing as little of 
astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I 
become credulously superstitious, and fancy it has an influence 
on my life. Have you, too, any flivorite star ?” 

“ Yes,” said Isaura ; “ and I distinguish it now, but I do not 
even know its name, and never would ask it.” 

So like me. I would not vulgarize my unknown source 


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of beautiful illusions by giviug it the name it takes in techni- 
cal catalogues. For fear of learning that name, I never have 
pointed it out to any one before. I too at this moment dis- 
tinguish it apart from all its brotherhood. Tell me which is 
yours.” 

Isaura pointed and explained. The Englishman was startled. 
By what strange coincidence could they both have singled out 
from all the host of heaven the same favorite star ? 

“(7Aeryane,” cried Savarin, “Colonel Morley declares that 
what America is to the terrestrial system Sirius is to the 
heavenly. America is to extinguish Europe, and then Sirius 
is to extinguish the world.” 

“Not for some millions of years ; time to look about us,” 
said the Colonel, gravely. “ But I certainly differ from those 
who maintain that Sirius recedes from us. I say that he 
approaches. The principles of a body so enlightened must 
be those of progress.” Then addressing Graham in English, 
he added, “ There will be a mulling in this fogified planet 
some day, I predicate. Sirius is a keener !" 

“ I have not imagination lively enough to interest myself 
in the destinies of Sirius in connection with our planet at a 
date so remote,” said Graham, smiling. Then he added in a 
whisper to Isaura, “ My imagination does not carry me-further 
than to wonder whether this day twelvemonth — the 8th of 
July — we two shall both be singling out that same star, and 
gazing on it as now, side by side.” 

This was the sole utterance of that sentiment in which the 
romance of love is so rich that the Englishman addressed to 
Isaura during those memorable summer days at Enghien. 


CHAPTER V. 


The next morning the party broke up. Letters had been 
delivered both to Savarin and to Graham, which, even had 
the day for departure not been fixed, would have summoned 
them away. On reading his letter, Savarin’^ brow became 
clouded. He made a sign to his wife after breakfast, and 
wandered away with her down an alley in the little garden. 
His trouble was of that nature which a wife either soothes or 
aggravates, according sometimes to her habitual frame of mind, 
sometimes to the mood of temper in which she may chance to 
be ; — a household trouble, a pecuniary trouble. 

Savarin was by no means an extravagant man. His mode 
of living, though elegant and hospitable, was modest compared 
to that of many French authors inferior to himself in the 
fame which at Paris brings a very good return in francs. Rut 
his station itself as the head of a powerful literary clique 
necessitated many expenses which were too congenial to his 
extreme good nature to be regulated by strict prudence. His 
hand was always open to distressed writers and struggling art- 
ists, and his sole income was derived from his pen and. a journal 
in which he was chief editor and formerly sole proprietor. Rut 
that journal had of late not prospered. He had sold or pledged 
a considerable share in the proprietorship. He had been com- 
pelled also to borrow a sum large for him, and the debt, ob- 
tained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his moneys “ by 

269 


270 


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way,” he said, “of maintaining an excitement and interest in 
life,” would in a few days become due. The letter was not 
from that creditor, but it was from his publisher, containing 
a very disagreeable statement of accounts, pressing for settle- 
ment, and declining an offer of Savarin’s for a new book (not 
yet begun) except upon terms that the author valued himself 
too highly to accept. Altogether, the situation was unpleas- 
ant. There were many times in which Madame Savarin 
presumed to scold her distinguished husband for his want of 
prudence and thrift. But those were never the times when 
scolding could be of no use. It could clearly be of no use 
now. Now was the moment to cheer and encourage him, to 
reassure him as to his own un diminished powers and popu- 
larity, for he talked dejectedly of himself as obsolete and 
passing out of fashion ; to convince him also of the impossi- 
bility that the ungrateful publisher whom Savarin’s more 
brilliant successes had enriched could encounter the odium of 
hostile proceedings ; and to remind him of all the authors, all 
the artists, whom he, in their earlier difficulties, had so liber- 
ally assisted, and from whom a sum sufficing to pay off the 
bourgeois creditor when the day arrived could now be honorably 
asked and would be readily contributed. In this last sugges- 
tion the homely prudent good sense of Madame Savarin 
failed her. She did not comprehend that delicate pride of 
honor which, with all his Parisian frivolities and cynicism, 
dignified the Parisian man of genius. Savarin could not, to 
save his neck from a rope, have sent round the begging-hat 
to friends whom he had obliged. Madame Savarin was one 
of those women with large-lobed ears, who can be wonderfully 


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271 


affectionate, wonderfully sensible, admirable wives and mothers, 
and yet are deficient in artistic sympathies with artistic 
natures. Still, a really good honest wife is such an incalcula- 
ble blessing to her lord, that, at the end of the talk in the 
solitary alUe^ this man of exquisite finesse^ of the undefinably 
high-bred temperament, and, alas ! the painfully morbid sus- 
ceptibility, which belong to the genuine artistic character, 
emerged into the open sunlit lawn with his crest uplifted, his 
lip curved upward in its joyous mockery, and perfectly per- 
suaded that somehow or other he should put down the offen- 
sive publisher and pay off the unoffending creditor when the 
day for payment came. Still, he had judgment enough to 
know that to do this he must get back to Paris, and could not 
dawdle away precious hours in discussing the principles of 
poetry with Grraham Vane. 

There was only one thing, apart from “ the begging-hat,” 
in which Savarin dissented from his wife. She suggested his 
starting a new journal in conjunction with Grustave Rameau, 
upon whose genius and the expectations to be formed from it 
(here she was tacitly thinking of Isaura wedded to Rameau, 
and more than a Malibran on the stage) she insisted vehe- 
mently. Savarin did not thus estimate Gustave Rameau — 
thought him a clever promising young writer in a very bad 
school of writing, who might do well some day or other. Rut 
that a Rameau could help a Savarin to make a fortune ! No ; 
at that idea he opened his eyes, patted his wife’s shoulder, and 
called her “ enfant^ 

Graham’s letter was from M. Renard, and ran thus : — 


272 


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Monsieur, — I had the honor to call at your apartment 
this morning, and I write this line to the address given to 
me by your concierge to say that I have been fortunate enough 
to ascertain that the relation of the missing lady is now at 
Paris. I shall hold myself in readiness to attend your sum- 
mons. — Deign to accept. Monsieur, the assurance of my pro- 
found consideration. 

J. Penari). 

This communication sufficed to put Graham into very high 
spirits. Anything that promised success to his research 
seemed to deliver his thoughts from a burden and his will 
from a fetter. Perhaps in a few days he might frankly and 
honorably say to Isaura words which would justify his retain- 
ing longer, and pressing more ardently, the delicate hand 
which trembled in his as they took leave. 

On arriving at Paris, Graham dispatched a note to M. 
Penard requesting to see him, and received a brief line in 
reply that M. Penard feared he should be detained on other 
and important business till the evening, but hoped to call at 
eight o’clock. A few minutes before that hour he entered 
Graham’s apartment. 

“ You have discovered the uncle of Louise Duval !” ex- 
claimed Graham ; “ of course you mean M. de Maul4on, and 
he is at I^aris ?’ ’ 

“ True so far. Monsieur ; but do not be too sanguine as to 
the results of the information I can give you. Permit me, 
as briefly as possible, to state the circumstances. When you 
acquainted me with the fact that M. de Maul6on was the uncle 
of Louise Duval, I told you that I was not without hopes of 


THE PARISIANS. 


273 


finding him out, though so long absent from Paris. I will 
now explain why. Some months ago, one of my colleagues 
engaged in the political department (which I am not) was 
sent to Lyons in consequence of some suspicions conceived by 
the loyal authorities there of a plot against the Emperor’s 
life. The suspicions were groundless, the plot a mare’s nest. 
But my colleague’s attention was especially drawn towards a 
man, not mixed up with the circumstances from which a plot 
had been inferred, but deemed in some way or other a dan- 
gerous enemy to the Government. Ostensibly, he exercised 
a modest and small calling as a sort of courtier or agent dc 
change ; but it was noticed that certain persons familiarly fre- 
quenting his apartment, or to whose houses he used to go at 
night, were disaffected to the Government — not by any means 
of the lowest rank — some of them rich malcontents who had 
been devoted Orleanists; others, disappointed aspirants to 
office or the ‘ cross;’ one or two well-born and opulent fanatics 
dreaming of another Bepublic. Certain very able articles in 
the journals of the excitable Midi, though bearing another 
signature, were composed or dictated by this man — articles 
evading the censure and penalties of the law, but very mis- 
chievous in their tone. All who had come into familiar com- 
munication with this person were impressed with a sense of 
his powers, and also with a vague belief that he belonged to 
a higher class in breeding and education than that of a petty 
agent de change. My colleague set himself to watch the man, 
and took occasions of business at his little office to enter into 
talk with him. Not by personal appearance, but by voice, he 
came to a conclusion that the man was not wholly a stranger 

M* 18 


274 


THE PARISIANS. 


to him ; a peculiar voice with a slight Norman breadth of pro- 
nunciation, though a Parisian accent ; a voice very low, yet 
very distinct — ^very masculine, yet very gentle. My colleague 
was puzzled, till late one evening he observed the man coming 
out of the house of one of these rich malcontents, the rich mal- 
content himself accompanying him. My colleague, availing him- 
self of the dimness of light, as the two passed into a lane which 
led to the agent’s apartment, contrived to keep close behind 
and listen to their conversation. But of this he heard nothing 
— only when, at the end of the lane, the rich man turned 
abruptly, shook his companion warmly by the hand, and 
parted from him, saying, ‘ Never fear; all shall go right with 
you, my dear Victor.’ At the sound of that name ‘ Victor,’ 
my colleague’s memories, before so confused, became instanta- 
neously clear. Previous to entering our service, he had been 
in the horse business — a votary of the turf; as such he had 
often seen the brilliant ^sportman, Victor de Mauleon ; 
sometimes talked to him. Yes, that was the voice — the 
slight Norman intonation (Victor de Mauleon’s father had it 
strongly, and Victor had passed some of his early childhood 
in Normandy), the subdued modulation of speech which had 
made so polite the offense to men, or so winning the court- 
ship to women — that was Victor de Mauleon. But why 
there in that disguise ? What was his real business and ol)- 
ject? My confrlre had no time allowed to him to prosecuto 
such inquiries. Whether Victor or the rich malcontent had 
observed him at their heels, and feared he might have over- 
heard their words, I know not, but the next day appeared in 
one of the popular journals circulating among the ouwriers a 


THE PARISIANS. 


275 


paragraph stating that a Paris spy had been seen at Lyons, 
warning all honest men against his machinations, and con- 
taining a tolerably accurate description of his person. And 
that very day, on venturing forth, my estimable colleague sud- 
denly found himself hustled by a ferocious throng, from 
whose hands he was with great difl&culty rescued by the muni- 
cipal guard. He left Lyons that night, and for recom 2 )ense 
of his services received a sharp reprimand from his chief. He 
had committed the worst offense in our profession, trop de zele. 
Having only heard the outlines of this story from another, I 
repaired to my confrere after my last interview with Monsieur, 
and learned what I now tell you fr.om his own lips. As he 
was not in my branch of the service, I could not order him 
to return to Lyons ; and I doubt whether his chief would 
have allowed it. But I went to Lyons myself, and there 
ascertained that our supposed Vicomte had left that town for 
Paris some months ago, not long after the adventure of my 
colleague. The man bore a very good character generally — 
was said to be very honest and inoffensive ; and the notice 
taken of him by persons of higher rank was attributed gen- 
erally to a respect for his talents, and not on account of any 
sympathy in political opinions. I found that the confrere 
mentioned, and who alone could identify M. de Maul^on in 
the disguise which the Yicomte had assumed, was absent in 
one of those missions abroad in which he is chiefly employed 
I had to wait for his return, aud it was only the day before 
yesterday that 1 obtained the following particulars. M. de 
Mauleon bears the same name as he did at Lyons — that name 
is Jean Lebeau ; he exercises the ostensible profession of ‘ a 


276 


THE PARISIANS. 


letter-writer,’ and a sort of adviser on business among the 
workmen and petty bourgeoisie^ and he nightly frequents the 

Cafe Jean Jacques^ Rue , Faubourg Montmartre. It is 

not yet quite half-past eight, and no doubt you could see him 
at the cafe this very night, if you thought proper to go.” 

“ Excellent ! I will go ! Describe him.” 

“ Alas ! that is exactly what I cannot do at present. For, 
after hearing what I now tell you, I put the same request you 
do to my colleague, when, before he could answer me, he was 
summoned to the bureau of his chief, promising to return and 
give me the requisite description. He did not return. And 
I find that he was compelled, on quitting his chief, to seize the 
first train starting for Lille, upon an important political inves- 
tigation which brooked no delay. He will be back in a few 
days, and then Monsieur shall have the description.” 

“ Nay : I think I will seize time by the forelock, and try 
my chance to-night. If the man be really a conspirator, and 
it looks likely enough, who knows but what he may see quick 
reason to take alarm and vanish from Paris at any hour? 

Cafe Jean Jacques^ Rue ; I will go. Stay ; you have 

seen Victor de Mauleon in his youth ; what was he like 
then?” 

“ Tall — slender, but broad-shouldered — very erect — carry- 
ing his head high — a profusion of dark curls — a small black 
moustache — fair clear complexion — light-colored eyes with 
dark lashes — fort bel homme. • But he will not look like that 
now.” 

“ His present age ?” 

“ Forty-seven or forty-eight. But before you go, I must 


THE PARISIANS. 


277 


beg you to consider well what you are about. It is evident 
that M. de Mauleon has some strong reason, whatever it be, 
for merging his identity in that of Jean Lebeau. I presume, 
therefore, that you can scarcely go up to M. Lebeau, when 
you have discovered him, and say, ‘ Pray, M. le Vicomte, can 
you give me some tidings of your niece, Louise Duval ?’ If 
you thus accosted him, you might possibly bring some danger 
on yourself, but you would certainly gain no information from 
him.” 

“ True.” 

“ On the other hand, if you make his acquaintance as M. 
Lebeau, how can you assume him to know anything about 
Louise Duval ?” 

“ Parhleu ! M. Renard, you try to toss me aside on both 
horns of the dilemma; but it seems to me that if I once 
make his acquaintance as M. Lebeau I might gradually and 
cautiously feel my way as to the best mode of putting the 
question to which I seek reply. I suppose, too, that the man 
must be in very poor circumstances to adopt so humble a call- 
ing, and that a small sum of money may smooth all diffi- 
culties.” 

“ I am not so sure of that,” said M. Renard, thoughtfully ; 
but grant that money may do so, and grant also that the 
Vicomte, being a needy man, has become a very unscrupulous 
ine — is there anything in your motives for discovering Louise 
Duval which might occasion you trouble and annoyance if it 
were divined by a needy and unscrupulous man ? — anything 
which might give him a power of threat or exaction ? Mind, 
I* am not asking you to tell me any secret you have reasons 


278 


THE PARISIANS. 


for concealing, but I suggest that it might be prudent if you 
did not let M. Lebeau know your real name and rank — if, in 
short, you could follow his example, and adopt a disguise. 
But no ; when I think of it, you would doubtless be so un- 
practiced in the art of disguise that he would detect you at 
once to be other than you seem ; and if suspecting you of 
spying into his secrets, and if those secrets be really of a 
political nature, your very life might not be safe.” 

“ Thank you for your hint — the disguise is an excellent 
idea, and combines amusement with precaution. That this 
Victor de Mauleon must be a very unprincipled and danger- 
ous man is, I think, abundantly clear. Granting that he was 
innocent of all design of robbery in the affair of the jewels,, 
still, the offense which he did own — that of admitting him- 
self at night by a false key into the rooms of a wife, whom 
he sought to surprise or terrify into dishonor — was a villain- 
ous action ; and his present course of life is sufficiently mys- 
terious to warrant the most unfavorable supposition. Besides, 
there is another motive for concealing my name from him : 
you say that he once had a duel with a Vane, who was very 
probably my father, and I have no wish to expose myself to 
the chance of his turning up in London some day and seek- 
ing to renew there the acquaintance that I had courted at 
Paris. As for my skill in playing any part I may assume, do 
not fear. I am no novice in that. In my younger days I 
was thought clever in private theatricals, especially in the 
transformations of appearance which belong to light comedy 
and farce. Wait a few minutes, and you shall see.” 

Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and in a few 


THE PARISIANS. 


279 


minutes reappeared, so changed that Eenard at first glance 
took him for a stranger. He had doffed his dress — which 
habitually, when in capitals, was characterized by the quiet, 
indefinable elegance that to a man of the great world, high- 
bred and young, seems “to the manner born” — for one of 
those coarse suits which Englishmen are wont to wear in their 
travels, and by which they are represented in French or Grerman 
caricatures, — ^loose jacket of tweed, with redundant pockets, 
waistcoat to match, short dust-colored trousers. He had 
combed his hair straight over his forehead, which, as I have 
said somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the charactei 
of his countenance, and, without any resort to paints or cos- 
metics, had somehow or other given to the expression of his 
face an impudent, low-bred expression, with a glass screwed 
on to his right eye, such a look as a cockney journeyman, 
wishing to pass for a “.swell” about town, may cast on a 
servant-maid in the pit of a suburban theatre. 

“Will it do, old fellow?” he exclaimed, in a rollicking, 
swaggering tone of voice, speaking French with a villainous 
British accent. 

“ Perfectly,” said Benard, laughing. “ I offer my compli- 
ments ; and if ever you are ruined, Monsieur, I will promise 
you a place in our police. Only one caution, — ^take care not 
to overdo your part.” 

“ Right. A quarter to nine — I’m off.” 


CHAPTEK VI. 


There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the 
return to any special amusement or light accomplishment as- 
sociated with the pleasant memories of earlier youth ; and 
remarkably so, I believe, when the amusement or accomplish- 
ment has been that of the amateur stage-player. Certainly 
I have known persons of very grave pursuits, of very dignified 
oharacter and position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boy- 
hood when disguising look and voice for a part in some draw- 
ing-room comedy or charade. I might name statesmen of 
solemn repute rejoicing to raise and to join in a laugh at their 
expense in such travesty of their habitual selves. 

The reader must not, therefore, be surprised, nor, I trust, 
deem it inconsistent with the more serious attributes of 
Graham’s character, if the Englishman felt the sort of joyous 
excitement I describe, as, in his way to the Cafe Jean Jacques^ 
he meditated the role he had undertaken ; and the joyousness 
was heightened beyond the mere holiday sense of humoristic 
pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to affect his lasting 
happiness might result from the success of the object for which 
his disguise was assumed. 

It was just twenty minutes past nine when he arrived at 
the Cafe Jean Jacques. He dismissed the fiacre and entered. 
The apartment devoted to customers comprised two large rooms. 
The first was the caf6 properly speaking ; the second, opening 
280 


THE PARISIANS. 


281 


on it, was the billiard-room. Conjecturing that he should 
probably find the person of whom he was in quest employed 
at the billiard-table, Graham passed thither at once. A tall 
man, who might be seven-and-forty, with a long black beard 
slightly grizzled, was at play with a young man of perhaps 
twenty-eight, who gave him odds — as better players of twenty- 
eight ought to give odds to a player, though originally of 
equal force, whose eye is not so quick, whose hand is not so 
steady, as they were twenty years ago. Said Graham to him- 
self, “ The bearded man is my Vicomte.” He called for a 
cup of cofiee, and seated himself on a bench at the end of the 
room. 

The bearded man was far behind in the game. It was his 
turn to play; the balls were placed in the most awkward' 
position for him. Graham himself was a fair billiard-player, 
both in the English and the French game. He said to himself, 
“No man who can make a cannon there should accept odds.” 
The bearded man made a cannon ; the bearded man continued 
to make cannons ; the bearded man did not stop till he had 
won the game. The gallery of spectators was enthusiastic. 
Taking care to speak in very bad, very English, French, 
Graham expressed to one of the enthusiasts seated beside him 
his admiration of the bearded man’s playing, and ventured 
to ask if the bearded man were a professional or an amateur 
player. 

“ Monsieur,” replied the enthusiast, taking a short cutty- 
pipe from his mouth, “ it is an amateur, who has been a great 
player in his day, and is so proud that he always takes less 
odds than he ought of a younger man. It is not once in a 


282 


THE PARISIANS. 


month that he comes out as he has done to-night ; but to-night 
he has steadied his hand. He has had ^ixpetits verves.^' 

“ Ah, indeed ! Do you know his name ?” 

“ I should think so ; he buried my father, my two aunts, 
and my wife.” 

“ Buried !” said Graham, more and more British in his 
accent ; “ I don’t understand.” 

“ Monsieur, you are English.” 

“ I confess it.” 

“ And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre.” 

“ True.” 

Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the liveliest 
member of the State Company for conducting funerals. They 
are going to play La Poule." 

Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the caf6^ and 
seated himself hap-hazard at one of the small tables. Glancing 
round the room, he saw no one in whom he could conjecture 
the once brilliant Vicomte. 

The company appeared to him sufficiently decent, and es- 
pecially what may be called local. There were some blouses 
drinking wine, no doubt of the cheapest and thinnest ; some 
in rough, coarse dresses, drinking beer. These were evidently 
English, Belgian, or German artisans. At one table, four 
young men, who looked like small journeymen, were playing 
cards. At three other tables, men older, better dressed, prob- 
ably shopkeepers, were playing dominoes. Graham scrutinized 
these last, but among them all could detect no one correspond- 
ing to his ideal of the Vicomte de Mauleon. “ Probably,” 
thought he, “ I am too late, or perhaps he will not be here 


THE PARISIANS. 


283 


this evening. At all events, I will wait a quarter of an hour.’’ 
Then, the gargon approaching his table, he deemed it neces- 
sary to call for something, and still, in strong English accent, 
asked for lemonade and an evening journal. The gargon 

nodded, and went his way. A monsieur at the round table 

■# 

next his own politely handed to him the “ Galignani,” saying, 
in very good English, though unmistakably the good English 
of a Frenchman, “ The English journal, at your service.” 

Graham bowed his head, accepted the “ Galignani,” and 
inspected his courteous neighbor. A more respectable-looking 
man no Englishman could see in an English country town. He 
wore an unpretending flaxen wig, with limp whiskers that 
met at the chin, and might originally have been the same 
color as the wig, but were now of a pale gray — no beard, no 
moustache. He was dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness 
of a sober citizen, — a high white neckcloth, with a large old- 
fashioned pin, containing a little knot of hair, covered with 
glass or crystal, and bordered with a black framework, in 
which were inscribed letters — evidently a mourning-pin, hal- 
lowed to the memory of lost spouse or child, — a man who, 
in England, might be the mayor of a cathedral town, at leasi 
the town-clerk. He seemed sufiering from some infirmity of 
vision, for he wore green spectacles. The expression of his 
face was very mild and gentle ; apparently he was about sixty 
years old — somewhat more. 

Graham took kindly to his neighbor, insomuch that, in 
return for the “ Galignani,” he offered him a cigar, lighting 
one himself. 

His neighbor refused politely. 


284 


THE PARISIANS. 


^^Merd! I never smoke — never; mon mAdecin forbids it. 
If I could be tempted, it would be by an English cigar. Ah, 
how you English beat us in all things — your ships, your 
iron, your tabac — which you do not grow !” 

This speech, rendered literally as we now render it, may 
give the idea of a somewhat vulgar speaker. But there was 
something in the man’s manner, in his smile, in his courtesy, 
which did not strike Graham as vulgar ; on the contrary, he 
thought within himself, “ How instinctive to all Frenchmen 
good breeding is !” 

Before, however, Graham had time to explain to his amiable 
neighbor the politico-economical principle according to which 
England, growing no tobacco, had tobacco much better than 
France which did grow it, a rosy middle-aged monsieur made 
his appearance, saying hurriedly to Graham’s neighbor, “ I'm 
afraid I’m late, but there is still a good half-hour before us if 
you will give me my revenge.” 

“Willingly, M. Georges. Gargon^ the dominoes.” 

“ Have you been playing at billiards ?” asked M. Georges. 

“Yes, two games.” 

“With success?” 

“ I won the first, and lost the second through the defect of 
my eyesight ; the game depended on a stroke which would 
have been easy to an infant — I missed it.” 

Here the dominoes arrived, and M. Georges began shufiling 
them ; the other turned to Graham and asked politely if he 
understood the game. 

“ A little, but not enough to comprehend why it is said to 
require so much skill.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


285 


* It is chiefly an affair of memory with me; but M. 
GeDrges, my opponent, has the talent of combination, which I 
have not.” 

“ Nevertheless,” replied M. Georges, gruffly, “ you are not 
easily beaten ; it is for you to play first, M. Lebeau.” 

Graham almost started. Was it possible ? This mild, limp- 
whiskered, flaxen-wigged man, Victor de Mauleon, the Don 
Juan of his time ! the last person in the room he should have 
guessed. Yet now, examining his neighbor with more atten- 
tive eye, he wondered at his stupidity in not having recognized 
at once the ci-devant gentilhomme and heau garden. It 
happens frequently that our imagination plays us this trick ; 
we form to ourselves an idea of some one eminent for good or 
for evil — a poet, a statesman, a general, a murderer, a swindler, 
a thief ; the man is before us, and our ideas have gone into so 
different a groove that he does not excite a suspicion. We 
are told who he is, and immediately detect a thousand things 
that ought to have proved his identity. 

Looking thus again with rectified vision at the false Lebeau, 
Graham observed an elegance and delicacy of feature which 
might in youth have made the countenance very handsome, 
and rendered it still good-looking, nay, prepossessing. He 
now noticed, too, the slight Norman accent, its native harsh- 
ness of breadth subdued into the modulated tones which be- 
spoke the habits of polished society. Above all, as M. Lebeau 
moved his dominoes with one hand, not shielding his pieces 
with the other (as M. Georges warily did), but allowing it to 
rest carelessly on the table, he detected the hands of the French 
aristocrat ; hands that had never done work — never (like those 


286 


THE PARISIANS. 


of the English noble of equal birth) been enabrowned or 
freckled, or roughened or enlarged by early practice in ath- 
letic sports ; but hands seldom seen save in the higher circles 
of Parisian life — ^partly perhaps of hereditary formation, partly 
owing their texture to great care begun in early youth and 
continued mechanically in after-life — with long taper fingers 
and polished nails ; white and delicate as those of a woman, 
but not slight, not feeble ; nervous and sinewy as those of a 
practiced swordsman. 

Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good-naturedly ex- 
plained to him its complications as it proceeded ; though the 
explanation, diligently attended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau 
the game. 

The dominoes were again shuffled, and during that operation 
M. Georges said, “ By the way, M. Lebeau, you promised to 
find me a locataire for my second floor ; have you succeeded ?” 

“ Not yet. Perhaps you had. better advertise in Les Petites 
Ajffiches. You ask too much for the habitues of this neighbor- 
hood — one hundred francs a month.” 

“ But the lodging is furnished, and well too, and has four 
rooms. One hundred francs are not much.” 

A thought flashed upon Graham. “ Pardon, Monsieur,” ho 
said, “ have you an apjpartement de gargon to let furnished ?” 

“ Yes, Monsieur, a charming one. Are you in search of an 
apartment?” 

“ I have some idea of taking one, but only by the month. 
T am but just arrived at Paris, and I have business which may 
keep me here a few weeks. I do but require a bedroom and a 
small cabinet, and the rent must be modest. I am not a 'i?a7ortZ.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


287 


“ I am sure we could arrange, Monsieur,” said M. Georges, 
though I could not well divide my logement. But one 
hundred francs a month is not much !” 

“ I fear it- is more than I can afford ; however, if you will 
give me your address, I will call and see the rooms, — say the 
day after to-morrow. Between this and then I expect letters 
which may more clearly decide my movements.” 

“ If the apartments suit you,” said M. Leheau, “ you will 
at least be in the house of a very honest man, which is more 
than can be said of every one who lets furnished apartments. 
The house, too, has a concierge^ with a handy wife who will 
arrange your rooms and provide you with coffee — or tea, 
which you English prefer — if you breakfast at home.” 

Here M. Georges handed a card to Graham, and asked what 
hour he would call. 

“ About twelve, if that hour is convenient,” said Graham, 
rising. “ I presume there is a restaurant in the neighborhood 
where 1 could dine reasonably?” 

“ Je crois hien — half a dozen. I can recommend you to 
one where you can dine en prince for thirty sous. And if 
you are at Paris on business, and want any letters written in 
private, I can also recommend to you my friend here, M. 
Lebeau. Ay, and on affairs his advice is as good as a lawyer’s, 
and his fee a hagatelle^ 

“ Don’t believe all that M. Georges so flatteringly says of 
me,” put in M. Lebeau, with a modest half-smile, and in Eng- 
lish. “ I should tell you that I, like yourself, am recently 
arrived at Paris, having bought the business and good will oi’ 
my predecessor in the apartment I occupy ; and it is only to 


288 


THE PARISIANS. 


the respect due to his antecedents, and on the score of a few 
letters of recommendation which I bring from Lyons, that I 
can attribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger in this 
neighborhood. Still, I have some knowledge of the world, and 
I am always glad if I can be of service to the English. I love 
the English ” — he said this with a sort of melancholy earnest- 
ness which seemed sincere ; and then added, in a more careless 
tone, “ I have met with much kindness from them in the 
course of a checkered life.” 

“You seem a very good fellow — in fact, a regular trump, 
M. Lebeau,” replied G-raham, in the same language. “ Grive 
me your address. To say truth, I am a very poor French 
scholar, as you must have seen, and am awfully bother-headed 
how to manage some correspondence on matters with which 
I am intrusted by my employer, so that it is a lucky chance 
which has brought me acquainted with you.” 

M. Lebeau inclined his head gracefully, and drew from a 
very neat morocco case a card, which Grraham took and 
pocketed. Then he paid for his coflFee and lemonade, and 
returned home well satisfied with the evening’s adventure. 


CHAPTER VII. 

The next morning Grraham sent for M. Renard and con- 
sulted with that experienced functionary as to the details of 
the plan of action which he had revolved during the hours of 
a sleepless night. 


THE PARISIANS. 


289 


“ In conformity with your advice,” said he, “ not to expose 
myself to the chance of future annoyance, by confiding to a 
man so dangerous as the false Lebeau my name and address, 
I propose to take the lodging offered to me, as Mr. Lamb, an 
attorney’s clerk, commissioned to get in certain debts, and 
transact other matters of business, on behalf of his employer’s 
clients. I suppose there will be no difficulty with the police 
in this change of name, now that passports for the English are 
not necessary?” 

“ Certainly not. You will have no trouble in that respect.” 

“ I shall thus be enabled very naturally to improve ac- 
quaintance with the professional letter-writer, and find an easy 
opportunity to introduce the name of Louise Duval. My 
chief difficulty, I fear, not being a practical actor, will be to 
keep up consistently the queer sort of language I have adopted, 
both in French and in English. I have too sharp a critic in 
a man so consummate himself in stage trick and disguise as 
M. Lebeau, not to feel the necessity of getting through my 
role as quickly as I can. Meanwhile, can you recommend me 
to some magasin where I can obtain a suitable change of cos- 
tume ? I can’t always wear a traveling suit, and I must buy 
linen of coarser texture than mine, and with the initials of 
my new name inscribed on it.” 

“ Quite right to study such details ; I will introduce you to 
a magasin near the Temple, where you will find all you want.” 

“ Next, have you any friends or relations in the provinces 
unknown to M. Lebeau, to whom I might be supposed to 
write about debts or business matters, and from whom I might • 
have replies?” 

Yol. I. — N 


19 


290 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ I will think over it, and manage that for you very easily. 
Your letters shall find their way to me, and I will dictate the 
answers.” 

After some further conversation on that business, M. Renard 
made an appointment to meet Graham at a cafe near the 
Temple later in the afternoon, and took his departure. 

Graham then informed his laquais de place that, though 
he kept on his lodgings, he was going into the country for a 
few days, and should not want the man’s services till he re- 
turned. He therefore dismissed and paid him off at once, so 
that the laquais might not observe, when he quitted his rooms 
the next day, that he took with him no change of clothes, etc. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Graham Vane has been for some days in the apartment 
rented of M. Georges. He takes it in the name of Mr. Lamb 
—a name wisely chosen, less common than Thomson and Smith, 
less likely to be supposed an assumed name, yet common 
enough not to be able easily to trace it to any special family. 
He appears, as he had proposed, in the character of an agent 
employed by a solicitor in London to execute sundry commis- 
sions and to collect certain outstanding debts. There is no 
need to mention the name of the solicitor ; if there were, he 
could give the name of his own solicitor, to whose discretion 
he could trust implicitly. He dresses and acts up to his as- 
sumed character with the skill of a man who, like the illus- 


THE PARISIANS. 


291 


trious Charles Fox, has, though in private representations, 
practiced the stage-play in which Demosthenes said the triple 
art of oratory consisted — who has seen a great deal of the 
world, and has that adaptability of intellect which knowledge 
of the world lends to one who is so thoroughly in earnest as 
to his end that he agrees to be sportive as to his means. 

The kind of language he employs when speaking English 
to Lebeau is that suited to the role of a dapper young under- 
ling of vulgar mind habituated to vulgar companionships. I 
feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at least to the memory 
of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to modify 
and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which 
he disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only 
here and there that I can venture to indicate the general tone 
of it. But in order to supply my deficiencies therein, the 
reader has only to call to mind the forms of phraseology which 
polite novelists in vogue, especially young-lady novelists, as- 
cribe to well-born gentlemen, and more emphatically to those 
in the higher ranks of the Peerage. No doubt Graham in his 
capacity of critic had been compelled to read, in order to 
review, those contributions to refined literature, and had 
familiarized himself to a vein of conversation abounding with 
“swell,” and “stunner,” and “ awfully jolly,” in its libel on 
manners and outrage on taste. 

He has attended nightly the Cafi Jean Jacques ; he has 
improved acquaintance with M. Georges and M. Lebeau ; he 
has played at billiards, he has played at dominoes, with the 
latter. He has been much surprised at the unimpeachable 
honesty which M. Lebeau has exhibited in both these games. 


292 


THE PARISIANS. 


In billiards, indeed, a man cannot cheat except by disguising 
his strength ; it is much the same in dominoes,— it is skill 
combined with luck, as in whist; but in whist there are 
modes of cheating which dominoes do not allow, — you can’t 
mark a domino as you can a card. It was perfectly clear to 
Graham that M. Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by billiards 
or dominoes at the Cafe Jemi Jacques, In the former he 
was not only a fair but a generous player. lie played exceed- 
ingly well, despite his spectacles ; but he gave, with something 
of a Frenchman’s lofty fanfaronnade^ larger odds to. his 
adversary than his play justified. In dominoes, where such 
odds could not well be given, he insisted on playing such small 
stakes as two or three francs might cover. In short, M. 
Lebeau puzzled Graham. All about M. Lebeau, his manner, 
his talk, was irreproachable, and baflied suspicion ; except iu 
this, Graham gradually discovered that the cafi had a quasi 
political character. Listening to talkers round him, he over- 
heard much that might well have shocked the notions of a 
moderate Liberal ; much that held in disdain the objects to 
which, in 1869, an English Kadical directed his aspirations. 
Vote by ballot, universal suffrage, etc., — such objects the 
French had already attained. By the talkers at the Cafe 
Jean Jacques they were deemed to be the tricky contrivances 
of tyranny. In fact, the talk was more scornful of what 
Englishmen understand by radicalism or democracy than 
Graham ever heard from the lips of an ultra Tory. It 
assumed a strain of philosophy far above the vulgar squabbles 
of ordinary party politicians — ^a philosophy which took for its 
fundamental principles the destruction of religion and of 


THE PARISIANS. 


293 


private property. These two objects seemed dependent the 
one on the other. The philosophers of the Jean Jacques held 
with that expounder of Internationalism, Eugene Dupont, 
Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions etouffent 
r intelligence.”*^ Now and then, indeed, a dissentient voice 
was raised as to the existence of a Supreme Being, but, with 
one exception, it soon sank into silence. No voice was raised 
in defense of private property. These sages appeared for the 
most part to belong to the class of ouvriers or artisans. Some 
of them were foreigners — Belgian, German, English; all 
seemed well off for their calling. Indeed, they must have 
had comparatively high wages, to judge by their dress and 
the money they spent on regaling themselves. The language 
of several was well chosen, at times eloquent. Some brought 
with them women who seemed respectable, and who often 
joined in the conversation, especially when it turned upon the 
law of marriage as a main obstacle to all personal liberty and 
sochil improvement. If this was a subject on which the 
women did not all agree, still they discussed it, without preju- 
dice and with admirable sang froid. Yet many of them 
looked like wives and mothers. Now and then a young jour- 
neyman brought with him a young lady of more doubtful 
aspect, but such a couple kept aloof from the others. Now 
and then, too, a man evidently of higher station than that of 
ouvrier^ and who was received by the philosophers with 
courtesy and respect, joined one of the tables and ordered a 
bowl of punch for general participation. In such occasional 

*• Disoours par Eugene Dupont k la Cloture du Congres de Bruxelles, 
Sept. 3, 1868. 

i 


294 


THE PARISIANS. 


visitors, Graham, still listening, detected a writer of the press ; 
now and then, a small artist, or actor, or medical student. 
Among the habitues there was one man, an ouvrier^ in whom 
Graham could not help feeling an interest. He was called 
Monnier, sometimes more familiarly Armand, his baptismal 
appellation. This man had a bold and honest expression of 
countenance. He talked like one who, if he had not read 
much, had thought much on the subjects he loved to discuss. 
He argued against the capital of employers quite as ably as 
Mr. Mill has argued against the rights of property in land. 
He was still more eloquent against the laws of marriage and 
heritage. But his was the one voice not to be silenced in 
favor of a Supreme Being. He had at least the courage of 
his opinions, and was always thoroughly in earnest. M. 
Lebeau seemed to know this man, and honored him with a 
nod and a smile, when passing by him to the table he gener- 
ally occupied. This familiarity with a man of that class, and 
of opinions so extreme, excited Graham’s curiosity. One 
evening he said to Lebeau, “ A queer fellow that you have 
just nodded to.” 

“ How so ?” 

“ Well, he has queer notions.” 

“ Notions shared, I believe, by many of your countrymen.” 

“ I should think not many. Those poor simpletons yonder 
may have caught them from their French fellow-workmen, 
but I don’t think that even the gohemouches in our National 
Reform Society open their mouths to swallow such wasps.” 

“Yet I believe the association to which most of those 
wvriers belong had its origin in England.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


295 


“ Indeed I what association ?” 

“ The International.” 

“ Ah, I have heard of that.” 

Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Graham’s face as 
he said, slowly, “ And what do you think of it?” 

Graham prudently checked the disparaging reply that first 
occurred to him, and said, “ I know so little about it that 1 
would rather ask you.” 

“I think it might become formidable if it found able 
leaders who knew how to use it. Pardon me — ^how came you 
to know of this cafe? Were you recommended to it?” 

“ No ; I happened to be in this neighborhood on business, 
and walked in, as I might into any other cafir 

“ You don’t interest yourself in the great social questions 
which are agitated below the surface of this best of all possible 
worlds?” 

“ I can’t say that I trouble my head much about them.” 

“ A game at dominoes before. M. Georges arrives ?” 

“ Willingly. Is M. Georges one of those agitators below 
the surface ?” 

“ No indeed. It is for you to play.” 

Here M. Georges arrived, and no further conversation on 
political or social questions ensued. 

Graham had already called more than once at M. Lebeau ’s 
office, and asked him to put into good French various letters 
on matters of business, the subjects of which had been fur- 
nished by M. Renard. The office was rather imposing and 
stately, considering the modest nature of M. Lebeau’s ostensi- 
ble profession. It occupied the entire ground-floor of a corner 


296 


THE PARISIANS. 


house, with a front door at one angle and a back door at the 
other. The anteroom to his cabinet, and in which Graham 
had generally to wait some minutes before he was introduced, 
was generally well filled, and not only by persons who, by 
their dress and outward appearance, might be fairly supposed 
sufiiciently illiterate to require his aid as polite letter-writers — 
not only hy servant-maids and grisettes^ by sailors, zouaves, and 
journeymen workmen — but not unfrequently by clients evi- 
dently belonging to a higher, or at least a richer, class of 
society, — men with clothes made by a fashionable tailor — • 
men, again, who, less fashionably attired, looked like opulent 
tradesmen and fathers of well-to-do families — the first gener- 
ally young, the last generally middle-aged. All these denizens 
of a higher world were introduced by a saturnine clerk into M. 
Lebeau’s reception-room very quickly, and in precedence of 
the ouvriers and grisettes. 

“ What can this mean ?” thought Graham. “ Is it really 
that this humble business avowed is the cloak to some political 
conspiracy concealed — the International Association ?” And, 
so pondering, the clerk one day singled him from the crowd 
and admitted him into M. Lebeau’s cabinet. Graham thought 
the time had now arrived when he might safely approach the 
subject that brought him to the Faubourg Montmartre. 

“You are very good,” said Graham, speaking in the Eng- 
lish of a young earl in our elegant novels — “ you are very 
good to let me in while you have so many swells and nobs 
waiting for you in the other room. But I say, old fellow, 
you have not the cheek to tell me that they want you to 
correct their cccker or spoon for them by proxy?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


297 


“ Pardon me,” answered M. Lebeau in French, “ if I prefer 
my own language in replying to you. I speak the English I 
learned many years ago, and your language in the heau monde^ 
to which you evidently belong, is strange to me. You are 
quite right, however, in your surmise that I have other clients 
than those who, like yourself, think I could correct their verbs 
or their spelling. I have seen a great deal of the world, — - 
I know something of it, and something of the law ; so that 
many persons come to me for advice and for legal information 
on terms more moderate than those of an avouS. But my ante- 
chamber is full, I am pressed for time ; excuse me if I ask 
you to say at once in what I can be agreeable to you to-day.” 

“ Ah !” said Graham, assuming a very earnest look, “ you 
do know the worldj that is clear ; and you do know the law 
of France — eh?” 

“ Yes, a little.” 

“ What I wanted to say at present may have something to 
do with French law, and I meant to ask you either to recom- 
mend to me a sharp lawyer, or to tell me how I can best get 
at your famous police here.” 

“ Police ?” 

“ I think I may require the service of one of those officers 
whom we in England call detectives ; but if you are busy 
now, I can call to-morrow.” 

“ I spare you two minutes. Say at once, dear Monsieur, 
what you want with law or police.” 

“ I am instructed to find out the address of a certain Louise 
Duval, daughter of a drawing-master named Adolphe Duval 
living in the Rue in the year 1848.” 

N* 


298 


THE PARISIANS. 


Gratam, while he thus said, naturally looked Leheau in 
the face — not pryingly, not significantly, but as a man gener- 
ally does look in the face the other man whom he accosts 
seriously. The change in the face he regarded was slight, 
but it was unmistakable. It was the sudden meeting of the 
eyebrows, accompanied with the sudden jerk of the shoulder 
and bend of the neck, which betoken a man taken by sur- 
prise and who pauses to reflect before he replies. His pause 
was but momentary. 

“ For what object is this address required ?” 

“ That I don’t know ; but evidently for some advantage to 
Madame or Mademoiselle Duval, if still alive, because my 
employer authorizes me to spend no less than £100 in ascer 
taining where she is, if alive, or where she was buried, if 
dead ; and if other means fail, I am instructed to advertise to 
the effect — ‘ That if Louise Duval, or, in case of her death, 
any children of hers living in the year 1849, will communi- 
cate with some person whom I may appoint at Paris, — such 
intelligence, authenticated, may prove to the advantage of the 
party advertised for.’ I am, however, told not to resort to 
this means without consulting either with a legal adviser or 
the police.” 

“ Hem ! — have you inquired at the house where this lady 
was, you say, living in 1848?” 

“ Of course I have done that ; but very clumsily, I dare 
say — through a friend — and learned nothing. But I must 
not keep you now. I think I shall apply at once to the 
police. What should I say when I get to the bureau f' 

“ Stop, Monsieur, stop. I do not advise you to apply to 


THE PARISIANS. 


299 


the police. It would be waste of time and money. Allow 
me to think over the matter. I shall see you this evening 
at the Cafe Jean Jacqiies at eight o’clock. Till then do 
nothing.” 

“ All right : I obey you. The whole thing is out of my 
way of business — awfully. Bon-jour'' 


CHAPTEE IX. 

Punctually at eight o’clock Glraham Vane had taken his 
seat at a corner table at the remote end of the Cafe Jean 
Jacques, called for his cup of coffee and his evening journal, 
and awaited the arrival of M. Lebeau. His patience was not 
tasked long. In a few minutes the Frenchman entered, 
paused at the comptoir, as was his habit, to address a polite 
salutation to the well-dressed lady who there presided, nodded 
as usual to Armand Monnier, then glanced round, recognized 
Graham with a smile, and approached his table with the quiet 
grace of movement by which he was distinguished. 

Seating himself opposite to Graham, and speaking in a 
voice too low to be heard by others, and in French, he then 
said — 

“ In thinking over your communication this morning, it 
strikes me as probable, perhaps as certain, that this Louise 
Duval, or her children, if she have any, must be entitled to 
some moneys bequeathed to her by a relation or friend iu 
England. What say you to that assumption, M. Lamb ?” 


300 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ You are a sharp fellow,” answered Graham. “Just what 
I say, to myself. Why else should I be instructed to go to 
such expense in finding her out ? Most likely, if one can’t 
trace her, or her children born before the date named, any 
such moneys will go to some one else ; and that some one 
else, whoever he be, has commissioned my employer to find 
out. But I don’t imagine any sum due to her or her heirs can 
be much, or that the matter is very important ; for, if so, the 
thing would not be carelessly left in the hands of one of the 
small fry like myself, and clapped in along with a lot of other 
business as an off-hand job.” 

“ Will you tell me who employed you ?” 

“ No, I don’t feel authorized to do that at present; and I 
don’t see the necessity of it. It seems to me, on considera- 
tion, a matter for the police to ferret out ; only, as I asked 
before, how should I get at the police?” 

“ That is not difficult. It is just possible that I might help 
you better than any lawyer or any detective.” 

“ Why, did you ever know this Louise Duval?” 

“ Excuse me, M. Lamb : you refuse me your full confi- 
dence ; allow me to imitate your reserve.” 

“ Oho !” said Graham ; “ shut up as close as you like ; it is 
nothing to me. Only observe, there is this difference between 
us, that I am employed by another. He does not authorize 
me to name him ; and if I did commit that indiscretion, I 
might lose my bread and cheese. Whereas you have nobody’s 
secret to guard but your own, in saying whether or not you 
ever knew a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval. And if you 
have some reason for not getting me the information I am 


THE PARISIANS. 


301 


instructed to obtain, that is also a reason for not troubling you 
further. And after all, old boy” (with a familiar slap on 
Lebeau’s stately shoulder) — “ after all, it is I who would em- 
ploy you ; you don’t employ me. And if you find out the 
lady, it is you who would get the £100, not I.” 

M. Lebeau mechanically brushed, with a light movement 
of hand, the shoulder which the Englishman had so' pleas- 
antly touched, drew himself and chair some inches back, and 
said, slowly — 

“ M. Lamb, let us talk as gentleman to gentleman. Put 
aside the question of money altogether. I must first know 
why your employer wants to hunt out this poor Louise Du- 
val. It may be to her injuiy, and I would do her none if you 
offered thousands where you offer pounds. I forestall the 
condition of mutual confidence ; I own that I have known 
her — it is many years ago ; and, M. Lamb, though a French- 
man very often injures a woman from love, he is in a worse 
plight for bread and cheese than I am if he injures her for 
money.” 

“ Is he thinking of the duchess’s jewels ?” thought Graham. 

“ Bravo, mon he said aloud ; “ but as I don’t know 

what my employer’s motive in his commission is, perhaps you 
can enlighten me. How could his inquiry injure Louise 
Duval?” 

“ I cannot say ; but you English have the power to divorce 
your wives. Louise Duval may have married an Englishman, 
separated from him, and he wants to know where he can find, 
in order to criminate and divorce her, or it may be to insist 
on her return to him.” 


302 


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“ Bosli 1 that is Dot likely.” 

“ Perhaps, then, some English friend she may have, known 
has left her a bequest, which would of course lapse to some 
one else if she be not living.” 

“ By gad !” cried Graham, “ I think you hit the right nail 
on the head : cest cela. But what then ?” 

‘‘ Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to Louise Du- 
val might result from the success of your inquiry, I would 
really see if it were in my power to help you. But I must 
have time to consider.” 

“ How long?” 

“ I can’t exactly say ; perhaps three or four days.” 

'‘’•Bon! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges. I leave you 
to dominoes and him. Good-night.” 

Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone in a chamber 
connected with the cabinet in which he received visitors. A 
ledger was open before him, which he scanned with careful 
eyes, no longer screened by spectacles. The survey seemed 
to satisfy him. He murmured, “ It suffices — the time has 
come ;” closed the book — returned it to his bureau, which he 
locked up — and then wrote in cipher the letter here reduced 
into English: — 

“Dear and noble Friend, — Events march; the Em- 
pire is everywhere undermined. Our treasury has thriven 
in my hands ; the sums subscribed and received by me 
through you have become more than quadrupled by advan- 
tageous speculations, in which M. Georges has been a most 
trustworthy agent. A portion of them I have continued to 
employ in the mode suggested — viz., in bringing together 


THE P A R I S I A N S. 


303 


men discreetly cliosen as being in tbeir various ways repre- 
sentatives and ringleaders of the motley varieties that, when 
united at the right moment, form a Parisian mob. But from 
that right moment we are as yet distant. Before we can call 
passion into action, we must prepare opinion for change. I 
propose now to devote no inconsiderable portion of our fund 
towards the inauguration of a journal which shall gradually 
give voice to our designs. Trust to me to insure its success 
and obtain the aid of writers who will have no notion of the 
uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that the 
time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press, 
addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are 
needed to destroy, and incapable of reconstructing, the time 
has also arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and 
rank of the man in whom you take so gracious an interest. 
In vain you have pressed him to do so before ; till now he 
had not amassed together, by the slow process of petty gains 
and constant savings, with such additions as pnident specula- 
tions on his own account might contribute, the modest means 
necessary to his resumed position. And as he always con- 
tended against your generous offers, no consideration should 
ever tempt him either to appropriate to his personal use a 
single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or to accept 
from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him into 
the hireling of a cause. No ! Victor de Mauleon despises too 
much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to 
say, ‘ Thou also wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.’ 

“ But to restore the victim of calumny to his rightful 
place in this gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in 
fortune, is a task that may well seem impossible. To-morrow 
he takes the first step towards the achievement of the im- 
possible. Experience is no bad substitute for youth, and 
ambition is made stronger by the goad of poverty. 

“ Thou shalt hear of his news soon.” 


book: V. 


CHAPTER 1. 

The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his study 
with M. Gandrin. 

“ Yes,” cried Louvier, “ I have behaved very handsomely 
to the beau Marquis. No one can say to the contrary.” 

“ True,” answered Gandrin. “ Besides the easy terms for 
the transfer of the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand 
louis is a generous and noble act of munificence.” 

“ Is it not I and my youngster has already begun to do with 
it as I meant and expected. He has taken a fine apartment ; 
he has bought a cowpi and horses ; he has placed himself in 
the hands of the Chevalier de Finisterre ; he is entered at 
the Jockey Club. Parhleu, the thousand louis will be soon 
gone.” 

“And then ?” 

“And then? — why, he will have tasted the sweets of 
Parisian life. He will think with disgust of the vieux manoir. 
He can borrow no more. I must remain sole mortgagee, and 
I shall behave as handsomely in buying his estates as I have 
behaved in increasing his income.” 

Here a clerk entered, and said “ that a monsieur wished to 
see M. Louvier for a few minutes in private, on urgent busi- 
ness.” 


304 


THE PARISIANS. 


305 


“ Tell tim to send in his card.” 

“ He has declined to do so, but states that he has already 
the honor of your acquaintance.” 

A writer in the press, perhaps ; or is he an artist ?” 

“ I have not seen him before, monsieur, but he has the air 
trls comme il faut'' 

“ Well, you may admit him. I will not detain you longer, 
my dear Gandrin. My homages to Madame. Bon-jour." 

Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then rubbed his hands 
complacently. He was in high spirits. “ Aha, my dear 
Marquis, thou art in my trap now. W ould it were thy father 
instead !” he muttered, chucklingly, and then took his stand on 
his hearth, with his back to the fireless grate. There entered 
a gentleman, exceedingly well dressed — dressed according to 
the fashion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not 
desiring to pass for younger than he was. 

He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his 
movements ; not slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise 
the strength and endurance which belonged to sinews and 
thews of steel, freed from all superfluous flesh, broad across 
the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had in youth 
been luxuriant in thickness and curl ; it was now clipped short, 
and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the 
lustre of its color and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore 
neither beard nor moustache, and the darkness of his hair was 
contrasted by a clear fairness of complexion, healthful, though 
somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare gray tint which has in it 
no shade of blue — peculiar eyes, which give a very distinct 
character to the face. The man must have been singularly 
VoL. I. 20 


30G 


THE PARISIANS. 


handsome in youth ; he was handsome still, though probably 
in his forty-seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very 
different kind of comeliness. The form of the features and 
the contour of the face were those that suit the rounded beauty 
of the Greek outline, and such beauty would naturally have 
been the attribute of the countenance in earlier days. But 
the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care or sorrow 
between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed 
lengthened, and the features had become more salient. 

Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had 
seen him before, and could not remember where or when, but, 
at all events, he recognized at the first glance a man of rank 
and of the great world. 

“ Pray be seated. Monsieur,” he said, resuming his own 
easy-chair. 

The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend 
of his head, drew his chair near to the financier’s, stretched 
his limbs with the ease of a man making himself at home, 
and, fixing his calm bright eyes quietly on Louvier, said, with 
a bland smile — 

“ My dear old friend, do you not remember me ? You are 
less altered than I am.” 

Louvier stared hard and long ; his lip fell, his cheek paled, 
and at last he faltered out, ^^Ciel! is it possible! Victor — 
the Vicomte de Maul^on ?” 

“ At your service, my dear Louvier.” 

There was a pause ; the financier was evidently confused 
and embarrassed, and not less evidently the visit of the “dear 
old friend” was unwelcome. 


THE PARISIANS. 


307 


“ Vicomte,” lie said at last, “ this is indeed a Surprise ; I 
thought you had long since quitted Paris for good.” 

“ ‘Z’Aomme propose^' etc. I have returned, and mean to 
enjoy the rest of my days in the metropolis of the Graces 
and the Pleasures. What though we are not so young as we 
were, Louvier, — we have more vigor in us than the new gen- 
eration ; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the 
gay carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the 
social temperament and ambitious mind. Yes, the roi des 
viveurs returns to Paris for a more solid throne than he filled 
before.” 

“ Are you serious ?” 

“As serious as the French gayety will permit one to 
be.” 

“ Alas, M. le Vicomte ! can you flatter yourself that you 
will regain the society you have quitted, and the name you 
have-^ ” 

Louvier stopped short ; something in the Vicomte’s eye 
daunted him. 

“ The name I have laid aside for convenience of travel. 
Princes travel incognito, and so may a simple gentilhomme. 
‘ Regain my place in society,’ say you ? Yes ; it is not that 
which troubles me.” 

“ What does ?” 

“ The consideration whether on a very modest income I can 
be sufficiently esteemed for myself to render that society more 
pleasant than ever. Ah, mon cherl why recoil? why so 
frightened ? Do you think I am going to ask you for money ? 
Have I ever done so since we parted ? and did I ever do so 


308 


THE PARISIANS. 


before without repaying you ? Bah ! you roturiers are worse 
than the Bourbons. You never learn nor unlearn. ^Fars non 
mutat genus' ” 

The magnificent millionaire, accustomed to the homage of 
grandees from the faubourg and lions from the Chaussee 
d’Antin, rose to his feet in superb wrath, less at the taunting 
words than at the haughtiness of mien with which they were 
uttered. 

“ Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that 
tone. Do you mean to insult me ?” 

“ Certainly not. Tranquilize your nerves, reseat yourself, 
and listen ; — reseat yourself, I say.” 

Louvier dropped into his chair. 

“ No,” resumed the Vicomte, politely, “ I do not come here 
to insult you, neither do I come to ask money ; I assume that 
I am in my rights when I ask M. Louvier what has become 
of Louise Duval ?” 

“ Louise Duval ! I know nothing about her.” 

“ Possibly not now ; but you did know her well enough, 
when we two parted, to be a candidate for her hand. You did 
know her well enough to solicit my good ofiices in promotion 
of your suit ; and you did, at my advice, quit Paris to seek 
her at Aix-la-Chapelle.” 

“ What ! have you, M. de Mauleon, not heard news of her 
since that day?” 

“ I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. 
You went to Aix-la-Chapelle ; you saw Louise Duval ; at my 
urgent request she condescended to accept your hand.” 

“ No, M. de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand. I did 


THE PARISIANS. 


309 


not even see her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle 
she had left it — not alone — left it with her lover.” 

“ Her lover I You do not mean the miserable Englishman 
wh( ” 

“ No Englishman,” interrupted Louvier, fiercely. “ Enough 
that the step she took placed an eternal barrier between her 
and myself I have never even sought to hear of her since 
that day. Vicomte, that woman was the one love of my life. 
I loved her, as you must have known, to folly — to madness. 
And how was my love requited ? Ah ! you open a very deep 
wound, M. le Vicomte.” 

“ Pardon me, Louvier ; I did not give you credit for 
feeling so keen and so genuine, nor did I think myself 
thus easily affected by matters belonging to a past life so 
remote from the present. For whom did Louise forsake 
you?” 

“ It matters not — he is dead.” 

“I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you.” 

“ I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass.” 

“Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer?* So 
proud, as she was, I can scarcely believe it.” 

“ Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled ; her pride would 
not have allowed that.” 

“ He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue 
to live with him?” 

“ That question, at least, I can answer; for, though I lost 
all trace of her life, his life was pretty well known to me till 
its end ; and a very few months after she fled he was enchained 
to another. Let us talk of her no more.” 


310 


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“ Ay, ay,” muttered De Maul^on, “ some disgraces are not 
to be redeemed, and therefore not to be discussed. To me, 
though a relation, Louise Duval was but little known, and, 
after what you tell me, I cannot dispute your right to say, 
‘ talk of her no more.’ You loved her, and she wronged you. 
My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed 
afresh.” 

These Words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness ; 
they softened Louvier towards the speaker. . 

After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his 
brow, as if to dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive 
thought ; then, with ^ changed expression of countenance — 
an expression frank and winning — with voice and with man- 
ner in which no vestige remained of the irony or the haughti- 
ness with which he had resented the frigidity of his reception, 
he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier’s, and resumed: 
“ Our situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we 
two became friends. I then could say, ‘ Open sesame’ to 
whatever recesses, forbidden to vulgar footsteps, the adven- 
turer whom I took by the hand might wish to explore. In 
those days my heart was warm; I liked you, Louvier — - 
honestly liked you. I think our personal acquaintance 
commenced in some gay gathering of young viveurs^ whose 
behavior to you offended my sense of good breeding?” 

Louvier colored, and muttered inaudibly. 

Dc Mauleon continued: “I felt it due to you to rebuke 
their incivilities, the more so as you evinced on that occasion 
your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to add, 
with no lack of becoming spirit.” 


T H-E PARISIANS. 


311 


Loiivier bowed bis head, evidently gratified. 

“ From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to 
me were incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. 
On more than one occasion when I was rapidly wasting money 
— and money was plentiful with you — you generously offered 
me your purse. On more than one occasion I accepted the 
offer ; and you would never have asked repayment if I had 
not insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your 
aid.” 

Louvier made a movenrent as if to extend his hand, but he 
checked the impulse. 

“ There was another attraction which drew me towards you. 
I recognized in your character a certain power in sympathy 
with that power which I imagined lay dormant in myself, and 
not to be found among the freluquets and lions who were my 
more habitual associates. Do you not remember some hours 
of serious talk we have had together when we lounged in the 
Tuileries or sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais 
Royal ? — hours when we forgot that those were the haunts 
of idlers, and thought of the stormy actions affecting the 
history of the world of which they had been the scene — hours 
when I confided to you, as I confided to no other man, the 
ambitious hopes for the future which my follies in the present, 
alas ! were hourly tending to frustrate ?” 

“ Ay, I remember the starlit night ; it was not in the gar- 
dens of the Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal, — -it was on the 
Pont de la Concorde, on which we had paused, noting the 
starlight on the waters, that you said, pointing towards the 
walls of the Corps Ligislatif^ ‘ Paul, when I once get into 


312 


THE PARISIANS. 


the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First Min- 
ister of France?’ ” 

“ Did I say so ? — possibly ; but I was too young then for 
admission to the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years 
yet to spare in idle loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass 
over these circumstances. You became in love with Louise. 
I told you her troubled history; it did not diminish your 
love ; and then I frankly favored your suit. You set out for 
Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards — then fell the thun- 
derbolt which shattered my existence — and we have never 
met again till this hour. You did not receive me kindly, 
Paul Louvier.” 

“ But,” said Louvier, falteringly — “but, since you refer to 
that thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that — that ” 

“ I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who 
have known me as well as you did to assist me now to refute.” 

“ If it be really a calumny.” 

“ Heavens, man ! could you ever doubt cried De 

Mauleon, with heat ; “ ever doubt that I would rather have 
blown out my brains than allowed them even to conceive the 
idea of a crime so base ?” 

“ Pardon me,” answered Louvier meekly, “ but I did not 
return to Paris for months after you had disappeared. My 
mind was unsettled by the news that awaited me at Aix ; I 
sought to distract it by travel — visited Holland and England ; 
and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your story 
was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own ac- 
count. You never took, or at least never accepted, the 
Duchesse de ’s jewels, and your friend M. de N. never 


THE PARISIANS. 


313 


Bold them to one jeweler and obtained their substitutes in 
paste from another ?” 

The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an im- 
pulse of rage ; then reseating himself in a chair, and with 
that slight shrug of the shoulder by which a Frenchman im- 
plies to himself that rage would be out of place, replied 
calmly, “ M. de N. did as you say, but, of course, not em- 
ployed by me, nor with my knowledge. Listen ; the truth is 
this — the time has come to tell it. Before you left Paris for 
Aix I found myself on the brink of ruin. I had glided 
towards it with my characteristic recklessness — with that 
scorn of money for itself, that sanguine confidence in the 
favor of fortune, which are vices common to every roi des 
viveurs. Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in 
youth ! we divide all we have among others, and when asked 
by some prudent friend, ‘ What have you left for your own 
share?’ answer, ‘ l^ope.’ I knew, of course, that my patri- 
mony was rapidly vanishiog ; but then my horses were match- 
less. I had enough to last me for years on their chance of 
winning — of course they would win. But you may recollect 
when we parted that I was troubled, — creditors’ bills before 
me ; usurers’ bills too, — and you, my dear Louvier, pressed 
on me your purse ; were angry when I refused it. How 
could I accept? All my chance of repayment was in the 
speed of a horse. I believed in that chance for myself ; but 
for a trustful friend, no. Ask your own heart now — nay, I 
will not say heart — ask your own common sense, whether a 
man who then put aside your purse — spendthrift, vaurien 
though he might be — was likely to steal or accept a woman’s 
Yol. I. — 0 


314 


THE PARISIANS. 


jewels. Va, man jpauvre Louvier ; again I say, ‘ Fors non 
mutat genus' ” 

Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, 
such reminiscences of his visitor’s motley character — irregu-? 
lar, turbulent, the reverse of severe, hut, in its own loose way, 
grandly generous and grandly brave — struck both on the 
common sense and the heart of the listener ; and the French- 
man recognized the Frenchman. Louvier doubted De Mau- 
leon’s word no more, bowed his head, and said, “ Victor de 
Mauleon, I have wronged you — go on.” 

“ On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on 
which my all depended : it was lost. The loss absorbed the 
whole of my remaining fortune ; it absorbed about twenty 
thousand francs in excess, a debt of jtionor to De N., whom 
you called my friend : friend he was not ; imitator, follower^ 
flatterer, yes. Still, I deemed him enough my friend to say 
to him, ‘ Give me a little time to pay the money ; I must sell 
my stud, or write to my only living relation from whom I 
have expectations.’ You remember that relation — Jacques 
de Mauleon, old and unmarried. By De N.’s advice I did 
write to my kinsman. No answer came ; but what did come 
were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly calculated my 
assets. The sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay 
every sou that I owed, including my debt to De N. ; but that 
was not quite certain — at all events, when the debts were paid 
I should be beggared. Well, you know, Louvier, what we 
Frenchmen are : how Nature has denied to us the quality of 
patience ; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when 
hope is lost — and suicide seemed to me here due to honor — 


THE PARISIANS. 


315 


viz., to the certain discharge of my liabilities — for the stud 
and effects of Victor de Mauleon, roi des viveurs^ would com- 
mand much higher prices if he died like Cato than if he ran 
away from his fate life Pompey. Doubtless De N. guessed 
my intention from my words or my manner ; but on the very 
day in which I had made all preparations for quitting the 
world from which sunshine had vanished, I received in a 
blank envelope bank-notes amounting to seventy thousand 
francs, and the post-mark on the envelope was that of the 
town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich kinsman 
Jacques. I took it for granted that the sum came from him. 
Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still 
I was his natural heir. The sum sufficed to pay my debt to 
De N., to all creditors,, and leave a surplus. My sanguine 
spirits returned. I would sell my stud ; I would retrench, 
reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent son. The fatted 
calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet. You 
understand that, Louvier ?” 

“ Yes, yes ; so like you. Go on.” 

“ Now, then, came the thunderbolt I Ah I in those sunny 
days you used to envy me for being so spoilt by women. The 

Duchesse de had conceived for me one of those romantic 

fancies which women without children, and with ample leisure 
for the waste of affection, do sometimes conceive for very 
ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they 
imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. I 
had been honored by some notes from the Duchesse in which 
this sort of romance was owned. I had not replied to them 
encouragingly. In truth, my heart was then devoted to 


316 


THE PARISIANS. 


anotlier, — tlie Englisli girl whom I had wooed as my wife, — 
who, despite her parents’ retractation of their consent to our 
union when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, 
pledged herself to remain faithful to me and wait for better 
days.” Again Be Mauleon paused in suppressed emotion, 
and then went on hurriedly : “No, the Buchesse did not in- 
spire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me with an 
affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to 
be a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that 
moment wholly misled from her right place among women 
by an illusion of mere imagination about a man who happened 
then to be very much talked about, and perhaps resembled 
some Lothario in the novels which she was always reading. 
We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house.” 

“ Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to 
a great ball given by the Buchesse ; how handsome I thought 
her, though no longer young ; and you say right — ^how I did 
envy you, that night !” 

“ From that night, however, the Buc, not unnaturally, 
became jealous. He reproved the Buchesse for her too ami- 
able manner towards a mauvais svjet like myself, and forbade 
her in future to receive my visits. It was then that these 
notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me by her 
maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies. 

“ But to proceed. In the flush of my high spirits, and in 
the insolence of magnificent ease with which I paid Be N. 
the trifle I owed him, something he said made my heart stand 
still. I told him that the money received had come from 
Jacques de Mauleon, and that I was going down to his house 


THE PARISIANS. 


317 


that day to thank him. He replied, ‘ Don’t go ; it did not 
come from him.’ ‘ It must ; see the post-mark of the envel- 
ope — Fontainebleau.’ ‘ I posted it at Fontainebleau.’ ‘ You 
sent me the money, you !’ ‘ Nay, that is beyond my means. 

AVhere it came from,’ said this miserable, ‘ much more may 
yet come ;’ and then he narrated, with that cynicism so in 
vogue at Paris, how he had told the Duchesse (who knew him 
as my intimate associate)* of my stress of circumstance, of his 
fear that I meditated something desperate ; how she gave him 
the jewels to sell and to substitute; how, in order to baffle 
my suspicion and frustrate my scruples, he had gone to Fon- 
tainebleau and there posted the envelope containing the bank- 
notes, out of which he secured for himself the payment he 
deemed otherwise imperiled. De N.,* having made this con- 
fession, hurried down the stairs swiftly enough to save himself 
a descent by the window. Do you believe me still ?” 

“ Yes ; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so con- 
siderate of self, I believe you implicitly.” 

“ Of course I did what any man would do — I wrote a hasty 
letter to the Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act of 
pure friendship so noble ; urging also the reasons that ren- 
dered it impossible for a man of honor to profit by such an 
act. Unhappily, what had been sent was paid away ere -I 
knew the facts ; but I could not bear the thought of life till 
my debt to her was acquitted ; in short, Louvier, conceive for 
yourself the sort of letter which I — which any honest man — 
would write, under circumstances so cruel.” 

“ H’m !” grunted Louvier. 

“ Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what 


318 


THE PARISIANS. 


De N. had told her as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor 
woman, who had deigned to take in me an interest so little 
deserved. Her reply, very agitated and incoherent, was 
brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and by 
whom, as I before said, our coiTespondence had been of late 
carried on. In her reply she implored me to reflect, to decide 
on nothing till I had seen her ; stated how the rest of her day 
was pre-engaged ; and, since to visit her openly had been made 
impossible by the Due’s interdict, inclosed the key to the pri- 
vate entrance to her rooms, by which I could gain an interview 
with her at ten o’clock that night, an hour at which the Due 
had informed her he should be out till late at his club. Now, 
however great the indiscretion which the Duchesse here com- 
mitted, it is due to hef memory to say that I am convinced 
that her dominant idea was that I meditated self-destruction, 
that no time was to be lost to save me from it, and for the 
rest she trusted to the influence which a woman’s tears and 
adjurations and reasonings have over even the strongest and 
hardest men. It is only one of those coxcombs in whom the 
world of fashion abounds who could have admitted a thought 
that would have done wrong to the impulsive, generous, im- 
prudent eagerness of a woman to be in time to save from 
death by his own hand a fellow-being for whom she had con- 
ceived an interest. I so construed her note. At the hour 
she named I admitted myself into the rooms by the key she 
sent. You know the rest : I was discovered by the Due and 
by the agents of police in the cabinet in which the Duchesse’ s 
jewels were kept. The key that admitted me into the cabinet 
was found in my possession.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


319 


De Maul4on’s voice here faltered, and he covered his face 
with a convulsive hand. Almost in the same breath he 
recovered from visible sign of emotion, and went on with a 
half-laugh. 

“ Ah ! you envied me, did you, for being spoiled by the 
women? Enviable position indeed was mine that night. 
The Due obeyed the first impulse of his wrath. He imagined 
that I had dishonored him : he would dishonor me in return. 
Easier to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of jewels 
than against a favored lover of his wife. But when I, obey- 
ing the first necessary obligation of honor, invented on the 
spur of the moment the story by which the Duchesse’s repu- 
tation was cleared from suspicion, accused myself of a frantic 
passion and the trickery of a fabricated key, the Due’s true 
nature of gentilhomme ca,me back. He retracted the charge 
which he could scarcely even at the first blush have felt to be 
well founded ; and as the sole charge left was simply that 
which men comme il faut do not refer to criminal courts and 
police investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested 
and retreat to my own rooms, awaiting there such communi- 
cations as the Due might deem it right to convey to me on 
the morrow. 

“ But on the morrow the Due, with his wife and personal 
suite, quitted Paris en route for Spain ; the bulk of his 
retinue, including the offending abigail, was discharged ; and, 
whether through these servants or through the police, the 
story before evening was in the mouth of every gossip in club 
or cafe — exaggerated, distorted, to my ignominy and shame. 
My detection in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the sub- 


320 


THE PARISIANS. 


stitution of paste by De N., who was known to be my servile 
imitator and reputed to be my abject tool, — all my losses on 
the turf, my. debts, — all these scattered fibres of flax were 
twisted together in a rope that would have hanged a dog with 
a much better name than mine. If some disbelieved that I 
could be a thief, few of those who should have known me best 
held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of theft — 
the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman.” 

“ But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters 
you had received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every 
stain on your honor.” 

“How? — shown her letters, ruined her character, even 
stated that she had caused her jewels to be sold for the uses 
of a young roue ! Ah, no, Louvier. I would rather have 
gone to the galleys !” 

“ H’m !” grunted Louvier again. 

“ The Due generously gave me better means of righting 
myself. Three days after he quitted Paris I received a letter 
from him, very politely written, expressing his great regret 
that any words implying the suspicion too monstrous and ab- 
surd to need refutation should have escaped him in the sur- 
prise of the moment ; but stating that, since the offense I had 
owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the 
necessity of asking the only reparation I could make. That 
if it ‘ deranged’ me to quit Paris, he would return to it for 
the purpose required ; but that if I would give. him the addi- 
tional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he should prefer 
to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by the 
indisposition of the Duchesse.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


321 


“You have still that letter?” asked Louvier, quickly. 

“ Yes ; with other more important documents constituting 
what I may call my pilces justijicatives. 

“ I need not say that I replied, stating the time at which I 
should arrive at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should 
await the Due’s command. Accordingly, I set out that same 
day, gained the hotel named, dispatched to the Due the an- 
nouncement of my arrival, and was considering how I should 
obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town — for my 
soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former 
acquaintances at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second 
among any of that faithless number — when the Due himself 
entered my room. Judge of my amaze at seeing him in per- 
son ; judge how much greater the amaze became when he 
advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his 
hand ! 

“ ‘ M. de Mauldon,’ said he, ‘ since I wrote to you, facts 
have become known to me which would induce me rather to 
ask your friendship than call on you to defend your life. 
Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill since we left Paris, 
and I refrained from all explanations likely to add to the hys- 
terical excitement under which she. was suffering. It is only 
this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then 
gave me her entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my 
reading the letters that you addressed to her. Those letters, 
Monsieur, suffice to prove your innocence of any design against 
my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly avowed her own 
indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction between 
indiscretion and guilt, that I have granted her my pardon 
* 21 


O' 


322 


THE PARISIANS. 


with a lightened heart and a firm belief that we shall be 
happier together than we have been yet.’ 

“ The Due continued his journey the next day, but he sub- 
sequently honored me with two or three letters written as 
friend to friend, and in which you will find repeated the sub- 
stance of what I have stated him to say by word of mouth.” 

“ But why not then have returned to Paris ? Such letters, 
at least, you might have shown, and in braving your calum- 
niators you would have soon lived them down.” 

“ You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale 
of my horses, etc., my debts, including what was owed to the 
Duchesse, and which I remitted to the Due, were discharged, 
the balance left to me would not have maintained me a week 
at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so indignant. Paris and 
the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And, to crown 
all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose 
fidelity I had so counted — well, I received a letter from her, 
gently but coldly bidding me farewell forever. I do not think 
she believed me guilty of theft, but doubtless the ofiense I 
had confessed, in order to save the honor of the Duchesse, 
could but seem to her all-sufficient ! Broken in spirit, bleed- 
ing at heart to the very core, still self-destruction was no 
longer to be thought of. I would not die till I could once 
more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon.” 

“ What then became of you, my poor Victor?” 

“ Ah ! that is a tale too long for recital. I have played so 
many parts that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity 
with the Victor de Maul4on whose name I abandoned. I 
have been a soldier in Algeria, and won my cross on the field 


THE PARISIANS. 


32S 


of battle- — that cross and my colonel’s letter are among my 
pieces justijicatives. I have been a gold-digger in California, 
a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and 
bumble. But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I 
have earned testimonials of probity, could manifestations of 
so vulgar a virtue be held of account by the enlightened peo- 
ple of Paris. I come now to a close. The Vicomte de Mau- 
leon is about to reappear in Paris, and the first to whom he 
announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier. When settled 
in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my 
pieces justijicatives. I shall ask you to summon my surviving 
relations or connections, among whom are the Counts de Van- 
demar, Beauvilliers, Be Passy, and the Marquis de Bochebri- 
ant, with any friends of your own who sway the opinions of 
the Great World. You will place my justification before 
them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices;^ — in a 
word, you will give me the sanction of your countenance. 
For the rest, I trust to myself to propitiate the kindly and 
to silence the calumnious. I have spoken : what say you ?” 

“ You overrate my power in society. Why not appeal your^ 
self to your high-born relations ?’’ 

“ No, Louvier ; I have too well considered the case to alter 
my decision. It is through you, and you alone, that I shall 
approach my relations. My vindicator must be a man of 
whom the vulgar cannot say, ‘ Oh, he is a relation — a fellow- 
noble : those aristocrats whitewash each other.’ It must be 
an authority with the public at large — a bourgeois^ a million- 
aire, a roi de la Bourse. I choose you, and that ends the 
discussion.” 


324 


THE PARISIANS. 


Louvier could not help laughing good-humoredly at the 
sang-froid of the Vicomte. He was once more under the 
domination of a man who had for a time dominated all with 
whom he lived. 

De Mauleon continued : “ Your task will be easy enough. 
Society changes rapidly at Paris. Few persons now exist 
who have more than a vague recollection of the circumstances 
which can be so easily explained to my complete vindication 
when the vindication comes from a man of your solid respecta- 
bility and social influence. Besides, I have political objects 
in view. You are a Liberal ; the Yandemars and Bocher 
briants are Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the Liberal 
side. PardieUj mon ami, why such coquettish hesitation? 
Said and done. Your hand on it.” 

“ There is my hand, then. I will do all I can to help you.” 

“ I know you will, old friend ; and you do both kindly and 
wisely.” Here De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he 
held, and departed. 

On gaining the street, the Yicomte glided into a neighbor- 
ing court-yard, in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the 
coachman drive towards the Boulevard Sebastopol. On the 
way, he took from a small bag that he had left in the carriage 
the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which distinguished M. 
Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an immense 
cloak, which he had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the 
Boulevard Sebastopol, he drew up the collar of the cloak so 
as to conceal much of his face, stopped the driver, paid him 
quickly, and, bag in hand, hurried on to another stand of 
fiacres at a little distance, entered one, drove to the Faubourg 


THE PARISIANS. 


325 


Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth of a street 
not far from M. Lebeau’s office, and gained on foot the private 
side door of the house, let himself in with his latch-key, 
entered the private room on the inner side of his office, 
locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to exchange the bril- 
liant appearance which the Vicomte de Maul4on had borne 
on his visit to the •lillionaire, for the sober raiment and 
bourgeois air of M. Lebeau the letter-writer. 

Then, after locking up his former costume in a drawer of 
his secritaire^ he sat himself down and wrote the following 
lines : 

“ Dear M. Georges, — I advise you strongly, from in- 
formation that has just reached me, to lose no time in press- 
ing M. Savarin to repay the sum I recommended you to lend 
him, and for which you hold his bill due this day. The 
scandal of legal measures against a writer so distinguished 
should be avoided if possible. He will avoid it and get the 
money somehow. But he must be urgently pressed. If you 
neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. — Agreez mes 
sentimens les plus ^inceres. J . L.” 


CHAPTER 11. 

The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer domiciled in an 
attic in the gloomy faubourg. See him now in a charming 
appartement de gargon au premier in the Rue du Helder, 
close by the promenades and haunts of the mode. It had 
been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant young provincial 


326 


THE PARISIANS. 


from TJordeaux, who, coming into an inheritance of a hundred 
thousand francs, had rushed up to Paris to enjoy himself and 
make his million at the Bourse. He had enjoyed himself 
thoroughly. He had been a darling of the demi-monde. He 
had been a successful and an inconstant gallant. Zelie had 
listened to his vows of eternal love and his offers of unlimited 
cachemires. Desiree, succeeding Z41i|| had assigned to him 
her whole heart, or all that was left of it, in gratitude for the 
ardor of his passion, and the diamonds and coupe which 
accompanied and attested the ardor. The superb Hortense, 
supplanting Desiree, received his visits in the charming 
apartment he furnished for her, and entertained him and his 
friends at the most delicate little suppers, for the moderate 
sum of four thousand francs a month. Yes, he had enjoyed 
himself thoroughly, but he had not made a million at the 
Bourse. Before the year was out, the hundred thousand 
francs were gone. Compelled to return to his province, and 
by his hard-hearted relations ordained, on penalty of starva- 
tion, to marry the daughter of an avoud for the sake of her 
dot and a share in the hated drudgery of the avoue's business, 
his apartment was to be had for a tenth part of the original 
cost of its furniture. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to 
whom Louvier had introduced the Marquis as a useful fellow, 
who knew Paris and would save him from being cheated, had 
secured this hijou of an apartment for Alain and concluded 
the bargain for the hagatelle of £500. The Chevalier took 
the same advantageous occasion to purchase the English well- 
bred hack and the neat coup6 and horses which the Bordelais 
was also necessitated to dispose of. These purchases made. 


THE PARISIANS. 


327 


the Marquis had some five thousand francs (£200) left out 
of Louvier’s premium of £1000. The Marquis, however, 
did not seem alarmed or dejected by the sudden diminution 
of capital so expeditiously effected. The easy life thus com- 
menced seemed to him too natural to be fraught with danger ; 
and, easy though it was, it was a very simple and modest sort 
of life compared with that of many other men of his age to 
whom Enguerrand had introduced him, though most of them 
had an income less than his, and few, indeed, of them were 
his equals in dignity of birth. Could a Marquis de Roche- 
briant, if he lived at Paris at all, give less than three thou- 
sand francs a year for his apartment, or mount a more humble 
establishment than that confined to a valet and a tiger, two 
horses for his coupe and one for the saddle? “ Impossible,” 
said the Chevalier de Finisterre, decidedly ; and the Marquis 
bowed to so high an authority. He thought within himself, 
“ If I find in a few months that I am exceeding my means, I 
can but dispose of my rooms and my horses, and return to 
Rochebriant a richer man by far than I left it.” 

To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris had already 
produced their effect, not only on the habits, but on the char- 
acter and cast of thought, which the young noble had brought 
with him from the feudal and melancholy Bretagne. 

Warmed by the kindness with which, once introduced by 
his popular kinsmen, he was everywhere received, the reserve 
or shyness which is the compromise between the haughtiness 
of self-esteem and the painful doubt of appreciation by others 
rapidly melted away. He caught insensibly the polished tone, 
at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made friends. With 


328 


THE PARISIANS. 


all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and fra- 
ternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity 
are most to be found. All gentilshommes in the best society 
are equals ; and, whether they embrace or fight each other, 
they embrace or fight as brothers of the same family. But 
with the tone of manners Alain de Bochebriant imbibed still 
more insensibly the lore of that philosophy which young idlers 
in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. Probably in all 
civilized and luxurious capitals that philosophy is very much 
the same among the same class of idlers at the same age; 
probably it flourishes in Pekin not less than in Paris. If 
Paris has the credit, or discredit, of it more than any other 
capital, it is because in Paris more than in any other capital 
it charms the eye by gi'ace and amuses the ear by wit. A phi- 
losophy which takes the things of this life very easily — which 
has a smile and a shrug of the shoulders for any pretender to 
the Heroic — which subdivides the wealth of passion into the 
poeket-money of caprices — is always in or out of love ankle- 
deep, never venturing a plunge — which, light of heart as of 
tongue, turns “the solemn plausibilities” of earth into sub- 
jects for epigrams and hons mots , — it jests at loyalty to kings 
and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for commonwealths — it 
abjures all grave studies — it shuns all profound emotions. 
We have crowds of such philosophers in London; but there 
they are less noticed, because the agreeable attributes of the 
sect are there dimmed and obfuscated. It is not a philosophy 
that flowers richly in the reek of fogs and in the teeth of east 
winds; it wants for full development the light atmosphere of 
Paris. Now, this philosophy began rapidly to exercise its 


THE PARISIANS. 


329 


charms upon Alain de Eochebriant. Even in the society of 
professed Legitimists he felt that faith had deserted the 
Legitimist creed, or taken refuge only, as a conjpanion of re- 
ligion in the hearts of high-born women and a small minority 
of priests. His chivalrous loyalty still struggled to keep its 
ground, but its roots were very much loosened. He saw — for 
his natural intellect was keen — that the cause of the Bourbon 
was hopeless, at least for the present, because it had ceased, 
at least for the present, to he a cause. His political creed 
thus shaken, with it was shaken also that adherence to the 
past which had stifled his ambition of a future. That ambi- 
tion began to breathe and to stir, though he owned it not to 
others — though as yet he scarce distinguished its whispers, 
much less directed its movements towards any definite object. 
Meanwhile, all that he -knew of his ambition was the new- 
born desire for social success. 

We see him, then, under the quick operation of this change 
in sentiments and habits, reclined on the fauteuil before his 
fireside, and. listening to his college friend, of whom we have 
so long lost sight, Frederic Lemercier. Frederic had break- 
fasted with Alain — a breakfast such as might have contented 
the author of the Almanack des Gourmands^ and provided 
from the Cafe Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his 
regalia. 

“ Pardieu! my dear Alain, if Louvier has no sinister ob- 
ject in the generosity of his dealings with you, he will have 
raised himself prodigiously in my estimation. I shall forsake, 
in his favor, my allegiance to Huplessis, though that clever 
fellow has just made a wondrous coup in the Egyptians and 


330 


THE PARISIANS. 


I gained forty thousand francs by having followed his advice. 
But if Duplessis has a head as long as Louvier’s, he certainly 
has not an equal greatness of soul. Still, my dear friend, will 
you pardon me if I speak frankly and in the way of a warning 
homily?” 

“ Speak : you cannot oblige me more.” 

“ Well, then, I know that you can no more live at Paris in 
the way you are doing, or mean to do, without some fresh 
addition to your income, than a lion could live in the Jardin 
des Plantes upon an allowance of two mice a week.” 

“ I don’t see that. Deducting what I pay to my aunt — 
and I cannot get her to take more than six thousand francs a 
year — I have seven hundred napoleons left, net and clear. 
My rooms and stables are equipped, and I have twenty-five 
hundred francs in hand. On seven hundred napoleons a year 
I calculate that I can very easily live as I do ; and if I fail — 
well, I must return to Bochebriant. Seven hundred napoleons 
a year will be a magnificent rental there.” 

Frederic shook his head. 

“ You do not know how one expense leads to another. 
Above all, you do not calculate the chief part of one’s ex- 
penditure — the unforeseen. You will play at the Jockey 
Club and lose half your income in a night.” 

“ I shall never touch a card.” 

“ So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the force of ex- 
ample. At all events, heau seigneur^ I presume you are not 
going to resuscitate the part of the Ermite de la CliaussSe 
d! Antin ; and the fair Parisiennes are demons of extra va* 
gance.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


331 


“Demons whom I shall not court.” 

“ Did I say you would ? They will court you. Before 
another month has flown, you will be inundated with liUets- 
doux'' 

“ It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest. 
But, mon cher^ we are falling upon very gloomy topics. Lais- 
sez-moi tranquille in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, 
you cannot conceive what a new life opens to the man who, 
like myself, has passed the dawn of his youth in privation 
and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. 
If it last only a year, it will be something to say, ‘ Vixi.’ ” 

“Alain,” said Frederic, very earnestly, “believe me, I 
should not have assumed the ungracious and inappropriate 
task of Mentor if it were only a year’s experience at stake, 
or if you were in the position of men like myself — free from 
the incumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged lands. 
Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier, 
he has the power to put up at public auction, and there to 
buy in for himself, your chateau and domain.” 

“ I am aware that in strict law he would have such power ; 
though I doubt if he would use it. Louvier is certainly a 
much better and more generous fellow than I could have ex- 
pected ; and, if I believe De Finisterre, he has taken a sincere 
liking to me, on account of affection to my poor father. But 
why should not the interest be paid regularly ? The revenues 
from Bochebriant are not likely to decrease, and the charge 
on them is lightened by the contract with Louvier. And I 
will confide to you a hope I entertain of a very large addition 
to my rental.” 


332 


THE PARISIANS. 


“How?” 

“ A chief part of my rental is derived from forests, and He 
Finisterre lias heard of a capitalist. who is disposed to make a 
contract for their sale at the fall this year, and may probably 
extend it to future years, at a price far exceeding that which 
I have hitherto obtained.” 

Pray be cautious. He Finisterre is not a man I should 
implicitly trust in such matters.” 

“ Why ? do you know anything against him ? He* is in 
the best society — perfect gentilJiom'ine — and, as his name may 
tell you, a fellow-Breton. You yourself allow, and so does 
Enguerraud, that the purchases he made for me — in this 
apartment, my horses, etc. — are singularly advantageous.” 

“ Quite true ; the Chevalier is reputed sharp and clever, is 
said to be very amusing, and a first-rate pzg'we^-player. I 
don’t know him personally. I am not in his set. I have no 
valid reason to disparage his character, nor do I conjecture 
any motive he could have to injure or mislead you. Still, I 
say, be cautious how far you trust to his advice or recom- 
mendation.” 

“ Again I ask. Why ?” 

“ He is unlucky to his friends. He attaches himself much 
to men younger than himself; and, somehow or other, I have 
observed that most of them have come to grief. Besides, a 
person in whose sagacity I have great confidence warned me 
against making the Chevalier’s acquaintance, and said to me, 
in his blunt way, ‘ He Finisterre came to Paris with nothing ; 
he has succeeded to nothing ; he belongs to no ostensible pro- 
fession by which anything can be made. But evidently now 


THE PARISIANS. 


333 


he has picked up a! good deal ; and in proportion as any young 
associate of his becomes poorer, De Finisterre seems mysteri- 
ously to become richer. Shun that sort of acquaintance.” 

“ Who is your sagacious adviser?” 

“ Duplessis.” 

“ Ah, I thought so. That bird of prey fancies every other 
bird looking out for pigeons. I fancy that Duplessis is, like 
all those money-getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finis- 
terre has not returned his bow.” 

“ My dear Alain, I am to blame ; nothing is so irritating 
as a dispute abaut the worth of the men we like. I began 
it, now let it be dropped ; only make me one proudse, that if. 
you should be in arrear, or if need presses, you will come at 
once to me. It was very well to be absurdly proud in an 
attic, but that pride will be out of place in your appartement 
au premier." ! 

“ You are the best fellow in the world, Frederic, and I 
make you the promise you ask,” said Alain cheerfully, but 
yet with a secret emotion of tenderness and gratitude. And 
now, mon cJier, what day will you dine with me tO meet Raoul, 
and Enguerrand, and some others whom you would like to 
know?” 

“Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now in different 
spheres, and I shall not trespass on yours. Je suu trop bour- 
geois to incur the ridicule of le bourgeois g^ntilhomme" 

“ Frederic, how dare you speak thus? My dear fellow, 
my friends shall honor you as I do.” 

“But that will be on your account, not mine. No; 
honestly, that kind of society neither tempts nor suits me. I 


334 


THE PARISIANS. 


am a sort of king in my own walk ; and I prefer my Bohe- 
mian royalty to vassalage in higher regions. Say no more of 
it. It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now and then 
descend to my coteries, and allow me to parade a Rochebriant 
as my familiar “crony, slap him on the shoulder, and call him 
Alain.” 

“ Fie ! you who stopped me and the English aristocrat in 
the Champs Elys4es, to humble us with your boast of having 
fascinated une grande dame — I think you said a duchesse^ 

“ Oh,” said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand 
through his scented locks, “ women are difierent ; love levels 
all ranks. I don’t blame Ruy Bias for accepting the love of 
a queen, but I do blame him for passing himself oflT as a 
noble — a plagiarism, by the by, from an English play. I do 
not love the English enough to copy them. A propos, what 
has become of ce beau Grarm Yarn? I have not seen him 
of late.” 

“ Neither have I.” 

“ Nor the belle Italienne T' 

“ Nor her,” said Alain, slightly blushing. 

At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room. Alain 
stopped Lemercier to introduce him to his kinsman. “ En- 
guerrand, I present to you M. Lemercier, my earliest and one 
of my dearest friends.” 

The young noble held out his hand with the bright and 
joyous grace which accompanied all his movements, and ex- 
pressed in cordial words his delight to make M. Lemercier’s 
acquaintance. Bold and assured as Frederic was in his own 
circles, he was more discomposed than set at ease by the gra» 


THE PARISIANS. 


335 


jious accost of a Uon^ whom he felt at once to be of a breed 
superior to his own. He muttered some confused phrases, in 
which ravi and Jlatte were alone audible, and evanished. 

“ I know M. Lemercier by sight very well,” said Enguer*- 
rand, seating himself. “ One sees him very often in the Bois ; 
and I have met him in the Coulisses and the Bal Mahille. I 
think, too, that he plays at the Bourse, and is lie with M. 
Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier one of these days. 
Is Duplessis also one of your dearest friends ?” 

“ No, indeed. I once met him, and was not prepossessed 
in his favor,” 

“ Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and re- 
spected.” 

“Why so?” 

“ Because he understands so well the art of making what 
we all covet — money. I will introduce you to him.” 

“ I have been already introduced.” 

“ Then I will reintroduce you. He is much courted in a 
society which I have recently been permitted by my father to 
frequent — the society of the Imperial Court.” 

“You frequent that society, and the Count permits it ?” 

“ Yes ; better the Imperialists than the Republicans ; and 
my father begins to own that truth, though he is too old or 
too indolent to act on it.” 

“ And Raoul ?” 

“ Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has 
no ambition of any kind, so long as — thanks somewhat to me 
— his purse is always replenished for the wants of his stately 
existence, among the foremost of which wants are the. means 


/ 


336 THE PARISIANS. 

to supply the wants of others. That is the true reason why 
he consents to our glove-shop. Raoul belongs, with some 
other young men of the faubourg, to a society enrolled under 
the name of Saint Fran9ois de Sales, for the relief of the 
poor. He visits their houses, and is at home by their sick- 
beds as at their stinted boards. Nor does he confine his visit- 
ations to the limits of our faubourg ; he extends his travels 
to Montmartre and Belleville. As to our upper world, he 
does not concern himself much with its changes. He says 
that ‘ we have destroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly ; and 
that whatever we do build could be upset any day by a Paris 
mob,’ which he declares to be ‘the only institution we have 
left.’ A wonderful fellow is Baoul ; full of mind, though he 
does little with it ; full of heart, which he devotes to suffer- 
ing humanity, and to a poetic, knightly reverence (not to be 
confounded with earthly love, and not to be degraded into 
that sickly sentiment called Platonic affection) for the Com- 
tesse di Rimini, who is six years older than himself, and who 
is very faithfully attached to her husband, Raoul’s intimate 
friend, whose honor he would guard as his own. It is an 
episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncom- 
mon as the malignant may suppose. Di Rimini knows and 
approves of his veneration ; my mother, the best of women, 
sanctions it, and deems truly that it preserves Raoul safe from 
all the temptations to which ignobler youth is exposed. I 
mention this lest you should imagine there was anything in 
Raoul’s worship of his star, less pure than it is. For the rest, 
Raoul, to the grief and amazement of that disciple of Voltaire, 
my respected father, is one of the very few men I know in 


THE PARISIANS. 


337 


our circles who is sincerely religious — an orthodox Catholic 
— and the only man I know who practices the religion he 
professes ; charitable, chaste, benevolent ; and no bigot, no in- 
tolerant ascetic. His only weakness is his entire submission 
to the worldly common sense of his good-for-nothing, covetous, 
ambitious brother Enguerrand. I cannot say how I love him 
foi that. If he had not such a weakness, his excellence 
would gall me, and I believe I should hate him.” 

Alain bowed his head at this eulogium. Such had been 
the character that, a few months ago, he would have sought 
as example and model. He seemed to gaze upon a flattered 
portrait of himself as he had been. 

^ “But,” said Enguerrand, “ I have not come here to indulge 
in the overflow of brotherly affection. I come to take you to 
your relation the Duchess of Tarascon. I have pledged my- 
self to her to bring you, and she is at home on purpose to 
receive you.” 

“ In that case I cannot be such a chjirl as to refuse. And, 
indeed, I no longer feel quite the same prejudices against her 
and the Imperialists as I brought from Bretagne. Shall I 
order my carriage?” 

“ No ; mine is at the door. Yours can meet you where 
you will, later. Allons. 


Yol. I.— p 


22 


CHAPTER III. 


The Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast apartment in 
the Rue Royale, close to the Tuileries. She held a high post 
among the ladies who graced the brilliant Court of the Em- 
press. She had survived her second husband the Due, who 
left no issue, and the title died with him. Alain and Enguer- 
rand were ushered up the grand staircase, lined with tiers of 
costly exotics as if for a fete ; but in that and in all kinds of 
female luxury the Duchesse lived in a state of fete perpetuelle. 
The doors on the landing-place were screened by heavy por- 
tieres of Genoa velvet, richly embroidered in gold with the 
ducal crown and cipher. The two salons through which the 
visitors passed to the private cabinet or boudoir were decorated 
with Gobelin tapestries, fresh, with a mixture of roseate hues, 
and depicting incidents in the career of the first Emperor ; 
while the efiigies of the late Due’s father — the gallant founder 
of a short-lived race — figured modestly in the background. 
On a table of Russian malachite within the* “^recess of the 
central window lay, preserved in glass cases, the baton and 
the sword, the epaulettes and the decorations, of the brave 
Marshal. On the consoles and the mantel-pieces stood clocks 
and vases of Sevres that could scarcely be eclipsed by those 
in the Imperial palaces. Entering the cabinet, they found the 
Duchesse seated at her writing-table, with a small Skye terrier, 
hideous in the beauty of the purest breed, nestled at her feet. 

338 


THE PARISIANS. 


339 


This room was an exquisite combination of costliness and 
comfort — Luxury at home. The hangings were of geranium- 
colored silk, with double curtains of white satin ; near to the 
writing-table a conservatory, with a white marble fountain at 
play in the centre, and a trellised aviary at the back. The 
walls were covered with small pictures — chiefly portraits and 
miniatures of the members of the Imperial family, of the 
late Due, of his father the Marshal and Madame la Marechale, 
of the present Duchesse herself, and of some of the principal 
ladies of the Court. 

The Duchesse was still in the prime of life. She had 
passed her fortieth year, but was so well “ conserved” that you 
might have guessed her to be ten years younger. She was 
tall ; not large — but with rounded figure inclined to emhon- 
point ; with dark hair and eyes, but fair complexion, injured 
in efiect rather than improved by pearl-powder, and that 
atrocious barbarism of a dark stain on the eyelids which has 
of late years been a baneful fashion ; dressed — I am a man, 
and cannot describe her dress — all I know is, that she had the 
acknowledged fame of the best-dressed subject of France. As 
she rose from her seat, there was in her look and air the un- 
mistakable evidence of grande dame ; a family likeness in 
feature to Alain himself, a stronger likeness to the picture of 
her first cousin — his mother — which was preserved at Roche- 
briant. Her descent was indeed from ancient and noble 
houses. But to the distinction -of race she added that of 
fashion, crowning both with a tranquil consciousness of lofty 
position and unblemished reputation. 

“ Unnatural cousin,” she said to Alain, ofiering her hand 


340 


THE PARISIANS. 


to him, with a gracious smile j “ all this age in Paris, and I 
see you for the first time. But there is joy on earth as in 
heaven over sinners who truly repent. You repent truly — 
riest-ce pas 

It is impossible to describe the caressing charm which the 
Duchesse threw into her words, voice, and look. Alain was 
fascinated and subdued. 

“ Ah, Madame la Duchesse,” said he, bowing over the fair 
hand he lightly held, ‘‘ it was not sin, unless modesty be a 
sin, which made a rustic hesitate long before he dared to ofier 
his homage to the queen of the graces.” 

“ Not badly said for a rustic,” cried Enguerrand ; “ eh, 
Madame ?” 

“ My cousin, you are pardoned,” said the Duchesse. “ Com- 
pliment is the perfume of gentilhominerie. And if you 
brought enough of that perfume from the fiowers of Roche- 
briant to distribute among the ladies at Court, you will be 
terribly the mode there. Seducer !” — here she gave the 
Marquis a playful tap on the cheek, not in a coquettish but 
in a mother-like familiarity, and, looking at him attentively, 
said, “ Why, you are even handsomer than your father. I 
shall be proud to present to their Imperial Majesties so be- 
coming a cousin. But seat yourselves here, Messieurs, close, 
to my arm-chair; causons.'' 

The Duchesse then took up the ball of the conversation. 
She talked without any apparent artifice, but with admirable 
tact; put just the questions about Rochebriant most calcu- 
lated to please Alain, shunning all that might have pained 
him ; asking him for descriptions of the surrounding scenery 


THE PARISIANS. 


341 


— the Breton legends ; hoping that the old castle would never 
be spoiled by modernizing restorations ; inquiring tenderly 
after his aunt, whom she had in her childhood once seen, and 
still remembered with her sweet, grave face ; paused little for 
replies ; then turned to Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk 
on the topics of the day, and every now and then bringing 
Alain into the pale of the talk, leading on insensibly until 
she got Enguerrand himself to introduce the subject of the 
Emperor, and the political troubles which were darkening a 
reign heretofore so prosperous and splendid. 

Her countenance then changed ; it became serious, and 
even grave, in its expression. 

“It is true,” she said, “that the times grow menacing — 
menacing not only to the throne, but to order and property 
and France. One by one they are removing all the break- 
waters which the Empire had constructed between the execu- 
tive and the most fickle and impulsive population that ever 
shouted ‘long live’ one day to the man whom they would 
send to the guillotine the next. They are denouncing what 
they call personal government — grant that it has its evils; 
but what would they substitute? — a constitutional mon- 
archy like the English ? That is impossible with universal 
suffrage and without a hereditary chamber. The nearest 
approach to it was the monarchy of Louis Philippe — we 
know how sick they became of that. A republic ? mon Dieu! 
composed of republicans terrified out of their wits at each 
other. The moderate men, mimics of the Girondins, with 
the Beds, and the Socialists, and the Communists, ready to 
tear them to pieces. And then — what then ? — the commer- 


342 


THE PARISIANS. 


cialists, the agriculturists, the middle class combining to elect 
some dictator who will cannonade the mob, and become a 
mimic Napoleon, grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Dan- 
ton. Oh, Messieurs, I am French to the core ! You inheritors 
of such names must be as French as I am ; and yet you men 
insist on remaining more useless to France in the midst of her 
need than I am, — I, a woman who can but talk and weep.” 

The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion which 
startled and profoundly affected Alain. He remained silent, 
leaving it to Enguerrand to answer. 

“ Dear Madame,” said the latter, “ I do not see how either 
myself or our kinsman can merit your reproach. We are 
not legislators. I doubt if there is a single department in 
France that would elect us, if we offered ourselves. It is 
not our fault if the various floods of revolution leave men of 
our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a perished world. 
The Emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are bad 
ones, his Majesty certainly will not ask Alain and me to 
replace them.” 

“You do not answer — you evade me,” said the Duchesse, 
with a mournful smile. “You are too skilled a man of the 
world, M. Enguerrand, not to know that it is not only legis- 
lators and ministers that are necessary to the support of a 
throne and the safeguard of a nation. Do you not see how 
great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section 
of public opinion which is represented by names illustrious 
in history, identified with records of chivalrous deeds and 
loyal devotion, rallies round the order established ? Let that 
section of public opinion stand aloof, soured and discontented. 


THE PARISIANS. 


343 


excluded from active life, lending no counterbalance to the 
perilous oscillations of democratic passion, and tell me if it is 
not an enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the principles it 
embodies ?” 

“ The principles it embodies, Madame,” said Alain, “ are 
those of fidelity to a race of kings unjustly Set aside, less for 
the vices than the virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the 
worst of the Bourbons, — he was the hien-aimi ^ — he escapes ; 
Louis XVI. was in moral attributes* the best of the Bour- 
bons, — he dies the death of a felon ; Louis XVIII., against 
whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign 
bayonets, reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, 
secretly scoffing alike at the royalty and the religion which 
were crowned in his person, dies peacefully in his bed ; 
Charles X., redeeming the errors of his youth by a reign 
untarnished by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is 
sent into exile for defending established order from the very 
inroads which you lament. He leaves an heir against whom 
calumny cannot invent a tale, and that heir remains an out- 
law simply because he descends from Henry IV. and has a 
right to reign. Madame, you appeal to us as among the 
representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion 
which characterized the old nobility of France. Should we 
deserve that character if we forsook the unfortunate, and 
gained wealth and honor in forsaking?” 

“ Your words endear you to me. I am proud to call you 
cousin,” said the Duchesse. “ But do you, or does any man 
in his senses, believe that if you upset the Empire you could 
get back the Bourbons ? that you would not be in imminent 


344 


THE PARISIANS. 


danger of a government infinitely more opposed to the theo- 
ries on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of 
Louis Napoleon ? After all, what is there in the loyalty of 
you Bourbonites that has in it the solid worth of an argu- 
ment which can appeal to the comprehension of mankind, 
except it be the principle of a hereditary monarchy ? Nobody 
nowadays can maintain the right divine of a single regal 
family to impose itself upon a nation. That dogma has 
ceased to be a living principle ; it is only a dead reminiscence. 
But the institution of monarchy is a principle strong and 
vital, and appealing to the practical interests of vast sections 
of society. Would you sacrifice the principle which concerns 
the welfare of millions, because you cannot embody it in the 
person of an individual utterly insignificant in himself? In 
a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of republican- 
ism for such a country as France, accept the monarchy you 
find, since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild the monarchy 
you would prefer. Does it not embrace all the great objects 
for which you call yoursdf Legitimist ? Under it religion is 
honored, a national church secured in reality if not in name ; 
under it you have united the votes of millions to the estab- 
lishment of the throne ; under it all the material interests of 
the country, commercial, agricultural, have advanced with an 
unequaled rapidity of progress; under it Paris has become 
the wonder of the world for riches, for splendor, for grace 
and beauty ; under it the old traditional enemies of France 
have been humbled and rendered impotent. The policy of 
Richelieu has been achieved in the abasement of Austria ; the 
policy of Napoleon I. has been consummated in the salvation 


THE PARISIANS. 


345 


of Europe from the semi-barbarous ambition of Russia. 
England no longer casts her trident in the opposite scale of 
the balance of European power. Satisfied with the honor of 
our alliance, she has lost every other ally ; and her forces 
neglected, her spirit enervated, her statesmen dreaming be- 
lievers in the safety of their island provided they withdraw 
from the affairs of Europe, may sometimes scold us, but will 
certainly not dare to fight. With France she is but an in- 
ferior satellite ; without France she is — nothing. Add to all 
this a Court more brilliant than that of Louis XIV., a sover- 
eign not indeed without faults and errors, but singularly mild 
in his nature, warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, 
whom personally no one could familiarly know and not be 
charmed with a honti of character lovable as that of Henri 
IV., — and tell me what more than all this could you expect 
from the reign of a Bourbon?” 

“ With such results,” said Alain, “ from the monarchy you 
BO eloquently praise, I fail to discover what the Emperor’s 
throne could possibly gain by a few powerless converts from 
an unpopular and, you say, no doubt truly, from a hopeless 
cause.” 

“ I say monarchy gains much by the loyal adhesion of any 
man of courage, ability, and honor. Every new monarchy 
gains much by conversions from the ranks by which the older 
monarchies were strengthened and adorned. But I do not 
here invoke your aid merely to this monarchy, my cousin ; I 
demand your devotion to the interests of France ; I demand 
that you should not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you 
think that France is in no danger — that you may desert or 

P* 


346 


TH? PARISIANS. 


oppose the Empire as you list, and that society will remain 
safe! You are mistaken. Ask Enguerrand.” 

“Madame,” said Enguerrand, “you overrate my political 
knowledge in that appeal ; hut, honestly speaking, I subscribe 
to your reasonings. I agree with you that the Empire sorely 
needs the support of men of honor: it has one cause of rot 
which now undermines it — dishonest jobbery in its administra- 
tive departments ; even in that of the army, which apparently 
is so heeded and cared for. I agree with you that France is 
in danger, and may need the swords of all her better sons, 
whether against the foreigner, or against her worst enemies — 
the mobs of her great towns. I myself received a military 
education, and but for my reluctance to separate myself from 
my father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for employments 
more congenial to me than those of the Bourse and my trade 
in the glove-shop. Rut Alain is happily free from all family 
ties, and Alain knows that my advice to him is not hostile to 
your exhortations.” 

.“ I am glad to think he is under so salutary an influence,” 
said the Duchesse ; and, seeing that Alain remained silent and 
thoughtful, she wisely changed the subject, and shortly after- 
wards the two friends took leave. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau. 
The letter- writer did not show himself at the cafi^ and was 
not to be found at his office, the ordinary business of which 
was transacted by his clerk, saying that his master was much 
engaged on important matters that took him from home. 

Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the 
discovery of Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense. 
At the cafi^ awaiting Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaint- 
ance with the ouvrier Armand Monnier, whose face and talk 
had before excited his interest. Indeed, the acquaintance had 
been commenced by the ouvrier, who seated himself at a table 
near to Graham’s, and, after looking at him earnestly for soma 
minutes, said, “You are waiting for your antagonist at domi- 
noes, M. Lebeau — a very remarkable man.” 

“ So he seems. I know, however, but little of him. You, 
perhaps, have known him longer?” 

“ Several months. Many of your countrymen frequent 
this cafe, but you do not seem to care to associate with the 
blouses." 

“It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don’t make 
acquaintance with each other readily. By the way, since you 
so courteously accost me, I may take the liberty of saying 
that I overheard you defend the other night, against one of 
my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great nonsense, 

347 


348 


THE PARISIANS. 


the existence of le Bon Dieu. You had much the best of it. 
I rather gathered from your argument that you went some- 
what further, and were not too enlightened to admit of Chris- 
tianity.” 

Armand Monnier looked pleased : he liked praise, and he 
liked to hear himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very 
complicated sort of Christianity — partly Arian, partly St. 
Simonian, with a little of Rousseau and a great deal of 
Armand Monnier. Into this we need not follow him ; but, 
in sum, it was a sort of Christianity the main heads of which 
consisted in the removal of your neighbor’s landmarks — in 
the right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich 
— in the right of love to dispense with marriage, and the 
duty of the state to provide for any children that might 
result from such union, the parents being incapacitated to do 
so, as whatever they might leave was due to the treasury 
in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melan- 
choly not unmixed with contempt. “ Are these opinions of 
yours,” he asked, “derived from reading or your own re- 
flection?” 

“ Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that 
induced me to read and reflect. I am one of the many vic- 
tims of the tyrannical law of marriage. When very young I 
married a woman who made me miserable and then forsook 
me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife — legally,- she is. 
I then met with another woman, who suits me, who loves me. 
She lives with me ; I cannot marry her ; she has to submit to 
humiliations — be called contemptuously an ouvrier's mistre^ss. 
Then, though before I was only a Republican, I felt there was 


THE PARISIANS. 


349 


something wrong in society which needed a greater change than 
that of a merely political government ; and then, too, when I 
was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame de 
Grantmesnil’s books. A glorious genius that woman’s !” 

“ She has genius, certainly,” said Graham, with a keen 
pang at his heart; Madame de Grantmesnil, the dearest 
friend of Isaura ! “ But,” he added, “ though I believe that 

eloquent author has indirectly assailed certain social institu- 
tions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly persuaded 
that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow of 
the system which all civilized communities have hitherto held 
in reverence, as your doctrines would attempt; and, after all, 
she but expresses her ideas through the medium of fabulous 
incidents and characters. And men of your sense should not 
look for a creed in the fictions of poets and romance- writers.” 

“ Ah,” said Monnier, “ I daresay neither Madame de Grant- 
mesnil nor even Bousseau ever even guessed the ideas they 
awoke in their readers; but one idea leads on to another. 
And genuine poetry and romance touch the heart so much 
more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de Grant- 
mesnil’s book set me thinking; and then I read other books, 
and talked with clever men, and educated myself And so I 
became the man I am.” Here, with a self-satisfied air, Mon- 
nier bowed to the Englishman, and joined a group at the 
other end of the room. 

The next evening, just before dusk, Graham Vane was 
seated musingly in his own apartment in the Faubourg Mont- 
martre, when there came a slight knock at his door. He was 
so wrapt in thought that he did not hear the sound, though 


350 


THE PARISIANS. 


twice repeated. The door opened gently, and M. Lebeau ap- 
peared on the threshold. The room was lighted only by the 
gas-lamp from the street without. 

Lebeau advanced through the gloom, and quietly seated 
himself in the corner of the fireplace opposite to Graham 
bef jre he spoke. “ A thousand pardons for disturbing your 
slumbers, M. Lamb.” 

Startled then by the voice so near him, Graham raised his 
head, looked round, and beheld very indistinctly the person 
seated so near him. 

“ M. Lebeau?” 

“ At your service. I promised to give an answer to your 
question: accept my apologies that it has been deferred so 
long. I shall not this evening go to our cafe ; I took the 
liberty of calling ” 

“ M. Lebeau, you are a brick ?” 

“ A what. Monsieur ! — a hrique 

“ I forgot — you are not up to our fashionable London 
idioms. A brick means a jolly fellow, and it is very kind in 
you to call. What is your decision ?” 

“ Monsieur, I can give you some information, but it is so 
slight that I offer it gratis and forego all thought of under- 
taking further inquiries. They could only be prosecuted in 
another country, and it would not be worth my while to leave 
Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a reward as you 
propose. Judge for yourself In the year 1849, and in the 
month of July, Louise Duval left Paris for Aix-la-Chapelle. 
There she remained some weeks, and then left it. I can learn 
no further traces of her movements.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


351 


“ Aix-la-Cliapelle ! — what could she do there ?” 

“ It is a Spa in great request ; crowded during the summer 
season with visitors from all countries. She might have gone 
there for health or for pleasure.” 

“ Do you think that one could learn more at the Spa itself 
if one went there ?” 

“ Possibly. But it is so long — twenty years ago.” 

“ She might have revisited the place.” 

“ Certainly ; but I know no more.” 

“ Was she there under the same name — Duval ?” 

“ I am sure of that.” 

“ Do you think she left it alone, or with others ? You 
-tell me she was awfully belle — she might have attracted 
admirers.” 

“ If,” answered Lebeau, reluctantly, “ I could believe the 
report of my informant, Louise Duval left Aix not alone, but 
with some gallant — not an Englishman. They are . said to 
have parted soon, and the man is now dead. But, speaking 
frankly, I do not think Mademoiselle Duval would have thus 
compromised her honor and sacrificed her future. I believe 
she would have scorned all proposals that were not those of 
marriage. But all I can say for certainty is, that nothing is 
known to me of her fate since she quitted Aix-la-Chapelle.” 

“ In 1849 — she had then a child living?” 

“ A child ? I never heard that she had any child ; and I 
do not believe she could have had any child in 1849.” 

Graham mused. Somewhat less than five years after 1849 
Louise Duval had been seen at Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly 
she found some attraction at that place, and might yet be dis- 


352 


THE PARISIANS. 


covered there. “Monsieur Lebeau,” said Grraham, “you 
know this lady by sight ; you would recognize her in spite 
of the lapse of years. Will you go to Aix and find out there 
what you can ? Of course, expenses will be paid, and the 
reward will be given if you succeed.” 

“ I cannot oblige you. My interest in this poor lady is not 
very strong, though I should be willing to serve her, and glad 
to know she were alive. I have now business on hand which 
interests me much more, and which will take me from Paris, 
but not in the direction of Aix.” 

“ If I wrote to my employer and got him to raise the re- 
ward to some higher amount that might make it worth your 
while?” 

“ I should still answer that my affairs will not permit such 
a journey. But if there be any chance of tracing Louise 
Duval at Aix — ^and there may be — you would succeed quite 
as well. as I should. You must judge for yourself if it be 
worth your trouble to attempt such a task ; and if you do 
attempt it, and do succeed, pray let me know. A line to my 
office will reach me for some little time, even if I am absent 
from Paris. Adieu, M. Lamb.” 

Here M. Lebeau rose and departed. 

Graham relapsed into thought, but a train of thought 
much more active, much more concentred than before. “ No,” 
— thus ran his meditations ; “no, it would not be safe to em- 
ploy that man further. The reasons that forbid me to offer 
any very high reward for the discovery of this woman operate 
still more strongly against tendering to her own relation a 
sum that might indeed secure his aid, but would unquestion- 


THE PARISIANS. 


353 


ably arouse his suspicions, and perhaps drag into light all 
that must be concealed. Oh, this cruel mission ! I am, in- 
deed, an impostor to myself till it be fulfilled. I will go to 
Aix, and take Renard with me. I am impatient till I set 
out, but I cannot quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura. 
She consents to relinquish the stage ; surely I could wean her 
too from intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has 
so fatal an effect upon enthusiastic minds. And then — and 
then?” 

He fell into a delightful reverie ; and, contemplating Isaura 
as his future wife, he surrounded her sweet image with all 
those attributes of dignity and respect with which an Eng- 
lishman is accustomed to invest the destined bearer of his 
name, the gentle sovereign of his household, the sacred mother 
of his children. In this picture the more brilliant qualities 
of Isaura found, perhaps, but faint presentation. Her glow 
of sentiment, her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for 
truths remote, for the invisible fairy-land of beautiful romance, 
receded into the background of the picture. It was all these, 
no doubt, that had so strengthened and enriched the love at 
first sight, which had shaken the equilibrium of his positive 
existence ; and yet he now viewed all these as subordinate to 
the one image of mild decorous matronage into which wed- 
lock was to transform the child of genius, longing for angel 
wings and unlimited space. 


VOL. I. 


23 


CHAPTER V. 


On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, 
Lebeau walked on with slow steps and bended head, like a 
man absorbed in thought. He threaded a labyrinth of ob- 
scure streets, no longer in the Faubourg Montmartre, and 
dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve the 
cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of 
improvement which, during the Second Empire, has so altered 
the face of Paris. At the bottom of the court stood a large 
house, much dilapidated, but bearing the trace of former 
grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in the style of the Renais- 
sance^ and a defaced coat of arms, surmounted with a ducal 
coronet, over the doorway. The house had the aspect of 
desertion; many of the windows were broken, others were 
jealously closed with mouldering shutters. The door stood 
ajar ; Lebeau pushed it open, and the action set in movement 
a bell within a porter’s lodge. The house, then, was not 
uninhabited ; it retained the dignity of a concierge. A 
man with a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a 
journal in his hand, emerged from the lodge, and moved his 
c?p with a certain bluff and surly reverence on recognizing 
1 beau. 

“ What ! so early, citizen ?” 

“Is it too early?” said Lebeau, glancing at his watch. 

354 


THE PARISIANS. 


355 


“ So it is. I was not aware of the time ; but I am tired with 
waiting. Let me into the salon. I will wait for the rest ; I 
shall not be sorry for a little repose.” 

“-Bon,” said the porter, sententiously : “ while man reposes 
men advance.” 

“ A profound truth. Citizen Le Roux ; though, if they ad- 
vance on a reposing foe, they have blundering leaders unless 
they march through unguarded by-paths and with noiseless 
tread.” 

Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau 
was admitted into a large room, void of all other furniture 
than a table, two benches at its sides, and a fauteuil at its 
head. On the mantel-piece there was a huge clock, and some 
iron sconces were fixed on the paneled walls. 

Lebeau flung himself with a wearied air into the fauteuil. 
The porter looked at him with a kindly expression. He had 
a liking to Lebeau, whom he had serve^in his proper profes- 
sion of messenger or commissionnaire before being placed by 
that courteous employer in the easy post he now held. Lebeau, 
indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming inferiors ; 
his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish pecu- 
liarities in each individual and flatter the amour-propre by 
deference to such eccentricities. Marc le Roux, the roughest 
of “ red caps,” had a wife of whom he was very proud. He 
would have called the Empress Citoyenne Eugenie^ but he 
always spoke of his wife as Madame. Lebeau won his heart 
by always asking after Madame. 

“You look tired, citizen,” said the porter; “let me bring 
you a glass of wine.” 


356 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Thank you, mon ami^ no. Perhaps later if I have time, 
after we break up, to pay my respects to Madame.” 

The porter smiled, bowed, and retired, muttering, “iVbm 
d\in petit honhomme — il rHy a rien de tel que les helles ma~ 
nihres” 

Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting 
his chin on his hand, and gazing into the dim space — for it 
was now, indeed, night, and little light came through the 
grimy panes of the one window left unclosed by shutters. He 
was musing deeply. This man was, in much, an enigma to 
himself. Was he seeking to unriddle it? A strange com- 
pound of contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there 
had been lightning-like flashes of good instincts, of irregular 
honor, of inconsistent generosity — a puissant wild nature — 
with strong passions of love and of hate, without fear, but 
not without shame. In other forms of society that love of 
applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety 
which he mistook Ir fame might have settled down into 
some solid and useful ambition. He might have become great 
in the world’s eye, for at the service of his desires there were 
no ordinary talents. Though too true a Parisian to be a 
severe student, still, on the whole, he had acquired much 
general information, partly from books, partly from varied 
commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by tongue 
and by pen, of expressing himself with force and warmth — 
time and necessity had improved that gift. Coveting, during 
his brief career of fashion, the distinctions which necessitate 
lavish expenditure, he had been the most reckless of spend- 
thrifts, but the needinejs which follows waste had never de- 


THE PARISIANS. 


357 


stroyed his original sense of personal honor. Certainly Victor 
de Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom 
the thought of accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of 
a woman who loved him, could have occurred as a possible 
question of casuistry between honor and temptation. Nor 
could that sort of question have, throughout the sternest 
trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been 
subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of 
those men, perhaps the most terrible though unconscious 
criminals, who are the offsprings produced by intellectual 
power and egotistical ambition. If you had offered to Victor 
de Mauldon the crown of the Caesars, on condition of his 
doing one of those base things which “ a gentleman” cannot 
do, — pick a pocket, cheat at cards, — Victor de Mauleon would 
have refused the crown. He would not have refused on 
account of any laws of morality affecting the foundations of 
the social system, but from the pride of his own personality. 
“ I, Victor de Mauleon ! , I pick a pocket ! I cheat at cards ! 
I !” But when something incalculably worse for the inter- 
ests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards 
was concerned: — when, for the sake either of private ambi- 
tion, or political experiment hitherto untested, and therefore 
very doubtful, the peace and order and happiness of millions 
might be exposed to the release of the most savage passions — 
rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre — then 
this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous 
as any English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough 
might elect as its representative. The system of the Empire 
was in the way of Victor de Mauleon — in the way of his 


358 


THE PARISIANS. ^ 


private ambition, in the way of his political dogmas — and 
therefore it must be destroyed, no matter what or whom it 
crushed beneath its ruins. He was one of those plotters of 
revolutions not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern, 
who invoke popular agencies with the less scruple because 
they have a supreme contempt for the populace. A man with 
mental powers equal to De Mauleon’s, and who sincerely 
loves the people and respects the grandeur of aspiration with 
which, in the great upheaving of their masses; they so often 
contrast the irrational credulities of their ignorance and the 
blind fury of their wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass 
the terrible gulf that divides reform from revolution. He 
knows how rarely it happens that genuine liberty is not dis- 
armed in the passage, and what suffering must be undergone 
by those who live by their labor during the dismal intervals 
between the sudden destruction of one form of society and 
the gradual settlement of another: Such a man, however, 
has no type in a Victor de Mauleon. The circumstances of 
his life had placed. this strong nature at war with society, and 
corrupted into misanthropy affections that had once been ardent. 
That misanthropy made his ambition more intense, because it 
increased his scorn for the human instruments it employed. 

Victor de Mauleon knew that, however innocent of the 
charges that had so long darkened his name, and however — 
thanks to his rank, his manners, his savoir-vivre — the aid of 
Louvier’s countenance, and the support of his own high-born 
connections — he might restore himself to his rightful grade 
in private life, the higher prizes in public life would scarcely 
be within reach, to a man of his antecedents and stinted 


THE PARISIANS. 


359 


means, ii. the existent form and conditions of established 
political order. Perforce, the aristocrat must make himself 
democrat if he would become a political chief. Could he 
assist in turning upside down the actual state of thing’s, he 
trusted to his individual force of character to find himself 
among the uppermost in the general houleversement. And in 
the first stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater 
darling than the noble who deserts his order, though in the 
second stage it may guillotine him at the denunciation of his 
cobbler. A mind so sanguine and so audacious as that of 
Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees 
a way to the first. 


CHAPTER VI. 

The room was in complete darkness, save where a ray from 
a gas-lamp at the mouth of the court came aslant through the 
window, when Citizen Le Roux re-entered, closed the window, 
lighted two of the sconces, and drew forth from a drawer in 
the table implements of writing, which he placed thereon 
noiselessly, as if he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head, 
buried in his hands, rested on the table. He seemed in a 
profound sleep. At last the porter gently touched the arm 
of the slumberer, and whispered in his ear, “ It is on the 
stroke of ten, citizen ; they will be here in a minute or so.” 
Lebeau lifted his head drowsily. 

“ Eh,” said he — “ what ?” 


360 


THE PARISIANS. 


You have been asleep.” 

“ I suppose so, for I have been dreaming. Ha ! I hear the 
door-bell. I am wide awake now.” 

The porter left him, and in a few minutes conducted into 
the salon two men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of 
the summer night. Lebeau shook hands with them silently, 
and not less silently they laid aside their cloaks and seated 
themselves. Both these men appeared to belong to the upper 
section of the middle class. One, strongly built, with a keen 
expression of countenance, was a surgeon considered able in 
his profession, but with limited practice, owing to a current 
suspicion against his honor in connection with a forged will. 
The other, tall, meagre, with long grizzled hair and a wild 
unsettled look about the eyes, was a man of science ; had 
written works well esteemed upon mathematics and electricity, 
also against the existence of any other creative power than 
that which he called “ nebulosity” and defined to be the com- 
bination of heat and moisture. The surgeon was about the 
age of forty, the atheist a few years older. In another min- 
ute or so, a knock was heard against the wall. One of the 
men rose and touched a spring in the panel, which then flew 
back and showed an opening upon a narrow stair, by which, 
one after the other, entered three other members of the society. 
Evidently there was more than one mode of ingress and exit. 

The three new-comers were not Frenchmen — one might 
see that at a glance ; probably they had reasons for greater 
precaution than those who entered by the front door. One, 
a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair hair and beard, dressed 
with a certain pretension to elegance — faded threadbare ele- 


THE PARISIANS. 


361 


gance — exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole. One 
— a slight bald man, very dark and sallow — was an Italian. 
The third, who seemed like an ouvrier in his holiday clothes, 
was a Belgian. 

Lebeau greeted them all with an equal courtesy, and each 
with an equal silence took his seat at the table. 

Lebeau glanced at the clock. “ Confrlres^' he said, “ our 
number, as fixed for this siance, still needs two to be com- 
plete, and doubtless they will arrive in a few minutes. Till 
they come,, we can but talk upon trifies. Permit me to offer 
you my cigar-case.” And, so saying, he who professed to be 
no smoker handed his next neighbor, who was the Pole, a 
large cigar-case amply furnished ; and the Pole, helping him- 
self to two cigars, handed the case to the man next him — two 
only declining the luxury, the Italian and the Belgian, But 
the Pole was the only man who took two cigars. 

Steps were now heard on the stairs, the door opened, and 
Citizen Le Roux ushered in, one after the other, two men, 
this time unmistakably French — to an experienced eye 
unmistakably Parisians : the one a young beardless man, 
who seemed almost boyish, with a beautiful face, and a 
stinted, meagre frame ; the other, a stalwart man of about 
eight-and-twenty, dressed partly as an ouvrier ^ not in his 
Sunday clothes, rather affecting the blouse , — not that he wore 
that antique garment, but that he was in rough costume un- 
brushed and stained, with thick shoes and coarse stockings, 
and a workman’s cap. But of all who gathered round the 
table at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distin- 
guished exterior. A virile honest exterior, a massive open 
VoL. I.— Q 


362 


THE PARISIANS. 


forehead, intelligent eyes, a handsome clear-cut incisive profile, 
and solid jaw. The expression of the face was stern, but not 
mean — ^an expression which might have become an ancient 
baron as well as a modern workman — in it plenty of haughti- 
ness and of will, and still more of self-esteem. * 

“ Confreres^" said Lebeau, rising, and every eye turned to 
him, “ our number for the present seance is complete. To 
business. Since we last met, our cause has advanced with 
rapid and not with noiseless stride. I need not tell you that 
Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated les idees Napoleonic 
ennes — a fatal mistake for him, a glorious advance for us. 
The liberty of the press must very shortly be achieved, and 
with it personal government must end. When the autocrat 
once is compelled to go by the advice of his Ministers, look 
for sudden changes. His Ministers will be but weathercocks, 
turned hither and thither according as the wind chops at 
Paris ; and Paris is the temple of the winds. The new revo- 
lution is almost at hand.” (Murmurs of applause.) “ It 
would move the laughter of the Tuileries and its Ministera, 
of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of every dainty salon of 
this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits, if they 
were told that here within this mouldering haraque^ eight 
men, so little blest by fortune, so little known to fame as our- 
selves, met to concert the fall of an empire. The Govern- 
ment would not deem us important enough to notice our 
existence.” 

“ I know not that,” interrupted the Pole. 

“ Ah, pardon,” resumed the orator ; “ I should have con- 
fined my remark to the five of us who are French. I did 


THE PARISIANS. 


363 


iDjustice to the illustrious antecedents of our foreign allies. I 
know that you, Thaddeus Loubisky — that you, Leonardo Ra- 
selli — have been too eminent for hands hostile to tyrants not 
to be marked with a black cross in the books of the police. I 
know that you, Jan Vanderstegen, if hitherto unscarred by 
those wounds in defense of freedom which despots and cowards 
would fain miscall the brands of the felon, still owe it to your 
special fraternity to keep your movements rigidly concealed. 
The tyrant would suppress the International Society, and for- 
bids it the liberty of congress. To you three is granted the 
secret entrance to our council -hall. But we Frenchmen are 
as yet safe in our supposed insignificance. Confreres^ permit 
me to impress on you the causes why, insignificant as we 
seem, we are really formidable. In the first place, we are 
few : the great mistake in most secret associations has been, 
to admit many councilors; and disunion enters wherever 
many tongues can wrangle. In the next place, though so 
few in- council, we are legion when the time comes for action ; 
because we are representative men each of his own section, 
and each section is capable of an indefinite expansion. 

“ You, valiant Pole — you, politic Italian — enjoy the con- 
fidence of thousands now latent in unwatched homes and 
harmless callings, but who, when you lift a finger, will, like 
the buried dragon’s teeth, spring up into armed men. You, 
Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from Verviers, that 
swarming camp of wronged labor in its revolt from the in- 
iquities of capital — you, when the hour arrives, cam touch 
the wire that flashes the telegram ‘Arise’ through all the 
iands in which workmen combine against their oppressors. 


364 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Of US five Frenchmen, let me speak more modestly. You 
— sage and scholar — Felix Kuvigny, honored alike for the 
profundity of your science and the probity of your manners, 
induced to join us by your abhorrence of priestcraft and 
superstition — ^you have a wide connection among all the 
enlightened reasoners who would emancipate the mind of 
man from the trammels of Church-born fable — and when the 
hour arrives in which it is safe to say, ^Dehnda est Roma,' 
you know where to find the pens that are more victorious 
than swords against a Church and a Creed. You” (turn- 
ing to the surgeon) — “you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile 
calumny has robbed of the throne in your profession, so justly 
due to your skill — ^you, nobly scorning the rich and great, 
have devoted yourself to tend and heal the humble and the 
penniless, so that you have won the popular title of the 
^MSd^cin des Pauvres ,' — when the time comes wherein sol- 
diers shall fiy before the sans-culottes, and the mob shall 
begin the work which they who move mobs will complete, the 
clients of Gaspard le Noy will be the avengers of his wrongs. 

“ You, Armand Monnier, simple ouvrier, but of illustrious 
parentage, for your grandsire was the beloved friend of the 
virtuous Robespierre, your father perished a hero and a 
martyr in the massacre of the coup d'etat; you, cultured in 
the eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the persuasive 
philosophy of Robespierre’s teacher, Rousseau — you, the 
idolized orator of the Red Republicans — ^you will be indeed 
a chief of dauntless bands when the trumpet sounds for 
battle. Young publicist and poet, Gustave Rameau — I care 
not which you are at present, I know what you will be soon 


THE PARISIANS. 


365 


— ^you need notliing for the development of your powers over 
the many but an organ for their manifestation. Of that 
anon. I now descend into the bathos of egotism. I am 
compelled lastly to speak of myself. It was at Marseilles and 
Lyons, as you already know, that I first conceived the plan 
of this representative association. For years before I had 
been in familiar intercourse with the friends of freedom — 
that is, with the foes of the Empire. They are not all poor. 
Some few are rich and generous. I do not say these rich and 
few concur in the ultimate objects of the poor and many. 
But they concur in the first object, the demolition of that 
which exists — the Empire. In the course of my special 
calling of negotiator or agent in the towns of the Midi^ I 
formed friendships with some of these prosperous malcon- 
tents. And out of these friendships I conceived the idea 
which is embodied in this council. 

“ According to that conception, while the council may com- 
municate as it will with all societies, secret or open, having 
revolution for their object, the council refuses to merge itself 
in any other confederation : it stands aloof and independent ; 
it declines to admit into its code any special articles of faith 
in a future beyond the bounds to which it limits its design 
and its force. That design unites us ; to go beyond would 
divide. We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty; 
none of us might agree as to what we should place in its 
stead. All of us here present might say, ‘A republic.’ Ay, 
but of what kind? Vanderstegen would have it socialistic; 
Monnier goes further, and would have it communistic, on the 
principles of Fourier ; Le Noy adheres to the policy of Ban- 


366 


THE PARISIANS. 


ton, ai d would commence the republic by a reign of terror j 
our Italian ally abhors the notion of general massacre, and 
advocates individual assassination. Ruvigny would annihilate 
the worship of a Deity; Monnier holds, with Voltaire and 
Robespierre, that ‘ if there were no Deity it would he neces- 
sary to Man to create one.’ Bref^ we could not agree upon 
any plan for the new edifice, and therefore we refuse to dis- 
cuss one till the plowshare has gone over the ruins of the old. 
Bit I have another and more practical reason for keeping 
our council distinct from all societies with professed objects 
beyond that of demolition. We need a certain command of 
money. It is I who bring to you that, and — how? Not 
from my own resources; they but suffice to support my- 
self Not by contributions from ouvriers^ who, as you well 
know, will subscribe only for their own ends in the victory 
of workmen over masters. I bring money to you from the 
coffers of the rich malcontents. Their politics are not those 
of most present ; their politics are what they term moderate. 
Some are indeed for a republic, but for a republic strong in 
defense of order, in support of property ; others — and they 
are the more numerous and the more rich — for a constitu- 
tional monarchy, and, if possible, for the abridgment of uni- 
versal suffrage, which, in their eyes, tends only to anarchy in 
the towns and arbitrary rule under priestly influence in the 
rural districts. They would not subscribe a sou if they 
thought it went to further the designs whether of Ruvigny 
the atheist, or of Monnier, who would enlist the Deity of 
Rousseau on the side of the drapeau rouge — not a sou if they 
knew I had the honor to boast such confreres as I see around 


THE PARISIANS. 


367 


me. They subscribe, as we concert, for the fall of Bonaparte. 
The policy I adopt I borrow from the policy of the English 
Liberals. Ifi England, potent millionaires, high-born dukes, 
devoted Churchmen, belonging to the Liberal party, accept 
the services of men who look forward to measures which 
Would ruin capital, eradicate aristocracy, and destroy the 
Church, provided these men combine with them in some im- 
mediate step onward against the Tories. They have a proverb 
which I thus adapt to French localities: If a train passes 
Fontainebleau on its way to Marseilles, why should I not 
take it to Fontainebleau because other passengers are going 
on to Marseilles? 

Confreres^ it seems to me the moment has come when 
we may venture some of the fund placed at my disposal to 
other purposes than those to which it has been hitherto de- 
voted. I propose, therefore, to set up a journal under the 
auspices of Gustave Eameau as editor-in-chief — a journal 
which, if he listen to my advice, will create no small sensa- 
tion. It will begin with a tone of impaitiality: it will re- 
frain from all violence of invective ; it will have wit, it will 
have sentiment, and eloquence ; it will win its way into the 
salons and cafis of educated men ; and then, and then, when 
it does change from polished satire into fierce denunciation 
and sides with the Houses, its effect will be startling and 
terrific. Of this I will say more to Citizen Rameau in 
private. To you I need not enlarge upon the fact that, 
at Paris, a combination of men, though immeasurably superior 
to us in status or influence, without a journal at command, is 
nowhere ; with such a journal, written not to alarm but to 


368 


THE PARISIANS. 


seduce fluctuating opinions, a combination of men immeasura- 
bly inferior to us may be anywhere. 

“ Confreres^ this affair settled, I proceed to distribute among 
you sums of which each who receives will render me an 
account, except our valued confrere the Pole. All that we 
can subscribe to the cause of humanity, a representative of 
Poland requires for himself.” (A suppressed laugh among 
all but the Pole, who looked round with a grave, imposing 
air, as much as to say, “ What is there to laugh at ? — ^a simple 
truth.”) 

M. Lebeau then presented to each of his confrlres a sealed 
envelope, containing no doubt a bank-note, and perhaps also 
private instructions as to its disposal. It was one of his rules 
to make the amount of any sum granted to an individual 
member of the society from the fund at his disposal a confi- 
dential secret between himself and the recipient. Thus jeal- 
ousy was avoided if the sums were unequal ; and unequal 
they generally were. In the present instance the two largest 
sums were given to the Medecin des Pauvres and to the dele- 
gate from Verviers. Both were no doubt to be distributed 
among “ the poor,” at the discretion of the trustee appointed. 

Whatever rules with regard to the distribution of money 
M. Lebeau laid down were acquiesced in without demur, for 
the money was found exclusively by himself, and furnished 
without the pale of the Secret Council, of which he had made 
himself founder and dictator. Some other business was then 
discussed, sealed reports from each member were handed to 
the president, who placed them unopened in his pocket, and 
resumed — 


THE PARISIANS. 


3fi9 


“ Confreres^ our seance is now concluded. The period for 
our next meeting must remain indefinite, for I myself shall 
leave Paris as soon as I have set on foot the journal, on the 
details of which I will confer with Citizen Rameau. I am 
not satisfied with the progress made by the two traveling 
missionaries who complete our Council of Ten ; and though I 
do not question their zeal, I think my experience may guide 
it if I take a journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Mar- 
seilles, where they now are. But should circumstances de- 
manding concert or action arise, you may be sure that I will 
either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such of 
our members as may be most usefully employed. For the 
present, confrlres^ you are relieved. Remain only you, dear 
young author.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the 
Secret Council remained silently musing for some moments ; 
but his countenance was no longer moody and overcast — his 
nostrils were dilated, as in triumph — ^there was a half-smile 
of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him curiously and 
admiringly. The young man had the impressionable, ex- 
citable temperament common to Parisian genius — especially 
when it nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the 
romance of belonging to a secret society ; he was acute 
enough to recognize the sagacity by which this small conclave 
was kept out of those crazed combinations fi r impracticable 
* 24 




^70 


THE PARISIANS. 


theories, more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian Rock 
than to the Capitol ; while yet those crazed combinations 
might, in some critical moment, become strong instruments 
in the hands of practical ambition. Lebeau fascinated him 
and took colossal proportions in his intoxicated vision — ^vision 
indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before it floated the 
realized image of his aspirations, — a journal of which he 
was to be the editor-in-chief — in which his poetry, his prose, 
should occupy space as large as he pleased — through which 
his name, hitherto scarce known beyond a literary clique, 
would resound in salon and club and cq/*^, and become a 
familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he owed this 
to the man seated there — a prodigious man ! 

“ Cher poete^^ said Lebeau, breaking silence, “ it gives me 
no mean pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose 
talents fit him for those goals on which they who reach write 
names that posterity shall read. Struck with certain articles 
of yours in the journal made celebrated by the wit and 
gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to inquire into your 
birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All confirmed 
my first impression, that you were exactly the writer I wish 
to secure to our cause. I therefore sought you in your 
rooms, unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my 
admiration of your compositions. Bref^ we soon became 
friends ; and after comparing minds, I admitted you,- at your 
request, into this Secret Council. Now, in proposing to you 
the conduct of the journal I would establish, for which I am 
prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to make 
imperative conditions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: 


THE PARISIANS. 


371 


that station, if the journal succeed, will secure you position 
and fortune; if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not 
speak of failure; I must have it succeed. Our interest, then, 
is the same. Before that interest all puerile vanities fade 
away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-chief ; but all the 
real work of editing will, at first, be done by others.” 

“ Ah !” exclaimed Bameau, aghast and stunned. Leboau 
resumed — 

“ To establish the journal I propose needs more than the 
genius of youth ; it needs the tact and experience of mature 
years.” 

Bameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his 
pale lips. Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he 
had thought. 

“A certain portion of the journal,” continued Lebeau, 
“ will be exclusively appropriated to your pen. 

Bameau’s lip lost the sneer. 

“ But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions 
of pure fancy, disporting in a world that does not exist ; or, 
if on graver themes connected with the beings of the world 
that does exist, the subjects will be dictated to you and revised. 
Yet even in the higher departments of a journal intended to 
make way at its first start, we need the aid, not indeed of 
men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is 
established — whose writings, good or bad, the public run to 
read, and will find good even if they are bad. You must 
consign one column to the playful comments and witticisms 
of Savarin.” 

“Savarin? But he has a journal of his own. He will 


372 


THE PARISIANS. 


not^ as an author, condescend to write in one just set up by 
me. And as a politician, he as certainly will not aid in an 
ultra-democratic revolution. If he care for politics at all, he 
is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist.” 

“ Enfant as an author Savarin will condescend to con- 
tribute to your journal, first, because it in no way attempts to 
interfere with his own ; secondly — I can tell you a secret — 
Savarin’ s journal no longer suffices for his existence ; he has 
sold more than two-thirds of its property ; he is in debt, and 
his creditor is urgent ; and to-mOrrow you will offer Savarin 
thirty thousand francs for one column from his pen, and signed 
by his name, for two months from the day the journal starts. 
He will accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt 
that hampers him, partly because he will take care that the 
amount becomes known, and that will help him to command 
higher terms for the sale of the remaining shares in the jour- 
nal he now edits, for the new book which you told me he in- 
tended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure 
to set up as soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say 
that, as a politician, Savarin, an Orleaniot, will not aid in an 
ultra-democratic revolution. Who asks him to do so ? Did I 
not imply at the meeting that we commence our journal with 
politics the mildest? Though revolutions are not made with 
rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their roots. The polite 
cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the surface of 
society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps. 
Had there been no Voltaire there would have been no Camille 
Desmoulins. Had there been no Diderot there would have 
been no Marat. We start as polite cynics. Of all cynics 


THE PARISIANS. 


373 


Savarin is the politest. But when I bid high for him, it is 
his clique that I bid for. Without his clique he is but a 
wit ; with his clique, a power. Partly out of that clique, 
partly out of a circle beyond it, which Savarin can more or 
less influence,- 1 select ten. Here is the list of them ; study 
it. Entre nous, I esteem their writings as little as I do arti- 
ficial flies ; but they are the artificial flies at which, in this 
particular season of the year, the public rise.. You must pro- 
cure at least five of the ten ; and I leave you carte blanche 
as to the terms. Savarin gained, the best of them will be 
proud of being his associates. Observe, none of these mes- 
sieurs of brilliant imagination are to write political articles ; 
those will be furnished to you anonymously and inserted with- 
out erasure or omission. When you have secured Savarin, 
and five at least of the collaborateurs in the list, write to me 
at my office. I give you four days to 'do this ; and' the 'day 
the journal starts you* enter into the income of fifteen thou- 
sand francs a year, with a rise in salary proportioned to profits. 
Are you contented with the terms ?” 

“ Of course I am ; but supposing I do not gain the aid of 
Savarin, or five at least of the list you give, which I see at a 
glance contains names the most d la mode in this kind of 
writing, more than one of them of high social rank, whom it 
is difficult for me even to approach — if, I say, I fail ?” 

“ What ! with a carte blanche of terms ? fie 1 Are you a 
Parisian? Well, to answer you frankly, if you fail in so 
easy a task, you are not the man to edit our journal, and I 
shall find another. Allez, courage ! Take my advice ; see 
Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course, my 


374 


THE PARISIANS. 


name and calling you will keep a profound secret from liim 
as from all. Say as mysteriously as you can tliat parties you 
are forbidden to name instruct you to treat with M. Savarin 
and offer him the terms I have specified, the thirty thousand 
francs paid to him in advance the moment he signs the simple 
memorandum of agreement. The more mysterious you are, 
the more-you will impose — that is, wherever you offer money 
and don’t ask for it.” 

Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of 
adieu, lightly descended the gloomy stairs. 


CHAPTEK VIII. 

At night, after this final interview with Lebeau, Graham 
took leave for good of his lodgings in Montmartre, and re- 
turned to his apartment in the Rue d’ Anjou. He spent 
several hours of the next morning in answering numerous 
letters, accumulated during his absence. Late in the after- 
noon he had an interview with M. Renard, who, as at that 
season of the year he was not overbusied with other affairs, 
engaged to obtain leave to place his services at Graham’s com- 
mand during the time requisite for inquiries at Aix, and to 
be in readiness to start the next day. Graham then went 
forth to pay one or two farewell visits, and, these over, bent 
his way through the Champs Elysdes towards Isaura’s villa, 
when he suddenly encountered Rochebriant on horseback. 
The Marquis courteously dismounted, committing his horse 


THE PARISIANS. 


375 


to the care of the groom, and, linking his arm in Giraham’s, 
expressed his pleasure at seeing him again ; then, with some 
visible hesitation and embarrassment, he turned the conversa- 
tion towards the political aspects of France. 

“There was,” he said, “much in certain words of yours, 
when we last walked together in this very path, that sank 
deeply into my mind at the time, and over which I have of 
late still more earnestly reflected. You spoke of the duties a 
Frenchman owed to France, and the ‘ impolicy’ of remaining 
aloof from all public employment on the part of those attached 
to the Legitimist cause.” 

“ True, it cannot be the policy of any party to forget that 
between the irrevocable past and the uncertain future there 
intervenes the action of the present time.” 

“ Should you, as an impartial bystander, consider it dis- 
honorable in me if I entered the military service under the 
ruling sovereign ?” 

“ Certainly not, if your country needed you.” 

“ And it may, may it not ? I hear vague rumors of coming 
war in almost every salmi I frequent. There has been gun- 
powder in the atmosphere we breathe ever since the battle of 
Sadowa. What think you of German arrogance and ambi- 
tion ? Will they suffer the swords of France to rust in their 
scabbards ?” 

“ My dear Marquis, I should incline to put the question 
otherwise. Will the jealous amour-propre of France permit 
the swords of Germany to remain sheathed? But, in either 
case, no politician can see without grave apprehension two 
nations so warlike, close to each other, divided by a border- 


376 


THE PARISIANS. 


land that one covets and the other will not yield, each armed 
to the teeth; the one resolved to brook no rival, the other 
equally determined to resist all aggression. And therefore, 
as you say, war is in the atmosphere ; and we may also hear, 
in the clouds that give no sign of dispersion, the growl of the 
gathering thunder. War may come any day ; and if France 
be not at once the victor ” 

“ France not at once the victor !” interrupted Alain, pas- 
sionately ; “ and against a Prussian I Permit me to say no 
Frenchman can believe that.” 

“Let no man despise a foe,” said Graham, smiling half 
sadly. “ However, I must not incur the danger of wounding 
your national susceptibilities. To return to the point you 
raise. If France needed the aid of her best and bravest, a 
true descendant of Henri Quatre ought to blush for his ancient 
noblesse were a Rochebriant to say, ‘ But I don’t like the color 
of the flag.’ ” 

“ Thank you,” said Alain, simply ; “ that is enough.” 
There was a pause, the young men walking on slowly, arm in 
arm. And then there flashed across Graham’s mind the recol- 
lection of talk on another subject in that very path. Here 
he had spoken to Alain in deprecation of any possible alliance 
with Isaura Cicogna, the destined actress and- public singer. 
His cheek flushed; his heart smote him. What! had he 
spoken slightingly of her — of her? What — if she became 
his own wife ! What 1 had he himself failed in the respect 
which he would demand as her right from the loftiest of his 
high-born kindred ? What, too, would this man, of fairer 
youth than himself, think of that disparaging counsel, when 


THE PARISIANS. 


377 


he hoard that the monitor had won the prize from which he 
had warned another? Would it not seem that he had but 
spoken in the mean cunning dictated by the fear of a worthier 
rival ? Stung by these thoughts, he arrested his steps, and, 
looking the Marquis full in the face, said, “ You remind me 
of one subject in our talk many weeks since; it is my duty to 
remind you of another. At that time you, and, speaking 
frankly, I myself, acknowledged the charm in the face of a 
young Italian lady. I told you then that, on learning she 
was intended for the stage, the charm for me had vanished. 
I said, bluntly, that it should vanish perhaps still more utterly 
for a noble of your illustrious name ; you remember?” 

“ Yes,” answered Alain, hesitatingly, and with a look of 
surprise. 

“ I wish now to retract all I said thereon. Mademoiselle 
Cicogna is not bent on the profession for which she was edu- 
cated. She would willingly renounce all idea of entering it. 
The only counter-weight which, viewed whether by my reason 
or my prejudices, could be placed in the opposite scale to that 
of the excellences which might make any man proud to win 
her, is withdrawn. I have become acquainted with her since 
the date of our conversation. Hers is a mind which harmo- 
nizes with the loveliness of her face. In one word. Marquis, 
I should deem myself honored, as well as blest, by such a 
bride. It was due to her that I should say this ; it was due 
also to you, in case you retain the impression I sought in 
ignorance to efface. And I am bound, as a gentleman, to obey 
this twofold duty, even though in so doing I bring upon my- 
self the affliction of a candidate for the hand to which I 


378 


THE PARISIANS. 


would fain myself aspire — a candidate with pretensions in 
every way far superior to my own.” 

An older or a more cynical man than Alain de Kochebriant 
might well have found something suspicious in a confession 
thus singularly volunteered ; but the Marquis was himself so 
loyaJ that he had no doubt of the loyalty of Graham. 

“ I reply to you,” he said, “ with a frankness which finds 
an example in your own. The first fair face which attracted 
my fancy since my arrival at Paris was that of the Italian 
demoiselle of whom you speak in terms of such respect. I 
do think if I had then been thrown into her society, and 
found her to be such as you no doubt truthfully describe, that 
fancy might have become a very grave emotion. I was then 
so poor, so friendless, so despondent. Your words of warning 
impressed me at the time, but less durably than you might 
suppose ; for that very night as I sat in my solitary attic I 
said to myself, ‘Why should I shrink, with an obsolete old- 
world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed 
a mhalliance? What is the value of my birthright now? 
None— worse than none. It excludes me from all careers ; 
my name is but a load that weighs me down. Why should I 
make that name a curse as well as a burden ? Nothing is 
left to me but that which is permitted to all men — wedded 
and holy love. Could I win to my heart the smile of a 
woman who brings me that dower, the home of my fathers 
would lose its gloom.’ And therefore, if at that time I had 
become familiarly acquainted with her who had thus attracted 
my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have become 
my destiny ; but now ” 


THE PARISIANS. 


379 


“ But now?” 

“ Things have changed. I am no longer poor, friendless, 
solitary. I have entered the world of my equals as a Roche- 
briant ; I have made myself responsible for the dignity of 
my name. I could not give that name to one, however peer- 
less in herself, of whom the world would say, ‘ But for her 
marriage she would have been a singer on the stage I’ I will 
own more : the fancy I conceived for the first fair face, other 
fair faces have dispelled. At this moment, however, I have 
no thought of marriage ; and having known the anguish of 
struggle, the privations of poverty, I would ask no woman to 
share the hazard of my return to them. You might present 
me, then, safely to this beautiful Italian — certain, indeed, that 
I should be her admirer ; equally certain that I could not be- 
come your rival.” 

There was something in this speech that jarred upon Gra- 
ham’s sensitive pride. But, on the whole, he felt relieved, 
both in honor and in heart. After a few more words, the two 
young men shook hands and parted. Alain remounted his 
horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant 
fiacre^ and directed the driver to Isaura’s villa. 


END OP THE FIRST VOLUME. 


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THE PARISIANS. 


VOL. II. 




v s 


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.^^AI^I/'IA'l awT 


.11 .j o ■/ 












THE PARISIANS, 


boo:k: -v. 

CONTINUED, 


CHAPTER IX. 

ISAURA. 

The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at her window, 
gazing dreamily on the rose-hued clouds that made the western 
border-land between earth and heaven. On the table before 
her lay a few sheets of MS. hastily written, not yet reperused. 
That restless mind of hers had left its trace on the MS. 

It is characteristic perhaps of the different genius of the 
sexes, that woman takes to written composition more impul- 
sively, more intuitively, than man — letter-writing, to him a 
task-work, is to her a recreation. Between the age of sixteen 
and the date of marriage, six well-educated clever girls out of 
ten keep a journal ; not one well-educated jnan in ten thou- 
sand does. So, without serious and settled intention of be- 
coming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and 
vivid fancy seeks in poetry or romance a confessional — an out- 

5 


N 


6 


THE PARISIANS. 


pouring of thouglit and sentiment, wliicli are mysteries to 
herself till she has given them words — and which, frankly 
revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could not, utter 
orally to a living ear ! 

During the last few days, the desire to create in the realm 
of fable beings constructed by her own breath, spiritualized 
by her own soul, had grown irresistibly upon this fair child 
of song. In fact, when Graham’s words had decided the 
renunciation of her destined career, her instinctive yearnings 
for the utterance of those sentiments or thoughts which can 
only find expression in some form of art, denied the one vent, 
irresistibly impelled her to the other. And in this impulse 
she was confirmed by tlie thought that here at least there 
was nothing which her English friend could disapprove — none 
of the perils that beset the actress. Here it seemed as if, 
could she but succeed, her fame would be grateful to the 
pride of all who loved her. Here was a career ennobled by 
many a woman, and side by side in rivalry with renowned 
men. To her it seemed that, could she in this achieve an 
honored name, that name took its place at once amid the 
higher ranks of the social world, and in itself brought a 
priceless dowry and a starry crown. It was, however, not till 
after the visit to Enghien that this ambition took practical 
life and form. 

One evening after her return to Paris, by an effort so in- 
voluntary that it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced 
a tale — without plan — without method — without knowing in 
one page what would fill the next. Her slight fingers hurried 
on as if, like the pretended spirit manifestations, impelled by 


THE PARISIANS. 


7 


an invisible agency without the pale of the world. She was 
intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing ideal images. In 
her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had no 
.thought of art; if art was in her work, it sprang uncon- 
sciously from the harmony between herself and her subject — 
as it is, perhaps, with the early soarings of the genuine lyric 
pDets, in contrast to the dramatic. For the true lyric poet is 
intensely personal, intensely subjective. It is himself that 
he expresses — that he represents — and he almost ceases to be 
lyrical when he seeks to go out of his own existence into that 
of others with whom he has no sympathy, no rapport. This 
tale was vivid with genius as yet untutored — genius in its 
morning freshness, full of beauties, full of faults. Isaura 
distinguished not the faults from the beauties. She felt only 
a vague persuasion that there was a something higher and 
brighter — a something more true to her own idiosyncrasy — 
than could be achieved by the art that “ sings other people’s 
words to other people’s music.” From the work thus com- 
menced she had now paused. And it seemed to her fancies 
that between her inner self and the scene without, whether 
in the skies and air and sunset, or in the abodes of men 
'stretching far and near till lost amid the roofs and domes of 
the great city, she had fixed and riveted the link of a sym- 
pathy hitherto fluctuating, unsubstantial, evanescent, unde- 
fined. Absorbed in her reverie, she did not notice the deep- 
ening of the short, twilight, till the servant entering drew the 
curtains between her and the world without, and placed the 
lamp on the table beside her. Then she turned away with a 
restless sigh, her eyes fell on the MS., but the charm of it 


8 


THE PARISIANS. 


was A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept 

into her thoughts, unconsciously to herself, and the page open 
before her at an uncompleted sentence seemed unwelcome and 
wearisome as a copy-book is to a child condemned to relin- 
quish a fairy-tale half told and apply himself to a task half 
done. She fell again into a reverie, when, starting as from a 
dream, she heard herself addressed by name, and, turning 
round, saw Savarin and Gustave Rameau in the room. 

“We are come, Signorina,” said Savarin, “to announce to 
you a piece of news, and to hazard a petition. The news is 
this : my young friend here has found a Maecenas who haS 
the good taste so to admire his lucubrations under the nom de 
jplume of Alphonse de Yalcour as to volunteer the expenses 
for starting a new journal, of which Gustave Rameau is to 
be editor-in-chief ; and I have promised to assist him as con^ 
tributor for the first two months. I have given him notes of 
introduction to certain other feuilletonistes and critics whom 
he has on his list. But all put together would not serve to 
float the journal like a short roman from Madame de Grant- 
mesnil. Knowing your intimacy with that eminent artist, I 
venture to back Rameau’s supplication that you would exert 
your influence on his behalf As to the honoraires, she has 
but to name them.” 

“ Carte blanche," cried Rameau, eagerly. 

“You know Eulalie too well, M. Savarin,” answered Isaura, 
with a smile half reproachful, “ to suppose that she is a mer- 
cenary in letters and sells her services to the best bidder.” 

“ Bah, belle enfant!" said Savarin, with his gay light laugh. 
“ Business is business, and books as well as razors are made to 


THE PARISIANS. 


9 


sell. But, of course, a proper prospectus of the journal must 
accompany your request to write in it. Meanwhile, Bameau 
will explain to you, as he has done to me, that the journal in 
question is designed for circulation among readers of haute 
classe : it is to be pleasant and airy, full of hons mots and 
anecdote ; witty, hut not ill-natured. Politics to be liberal, 
of course, but of elegant admixture — champagne and seltzer- 
water. In fact, however, I suspect that the politics will be a 
very inconsiderable feature in this organ of fine arts and man- 
ners ; some amateur scribbler in the ‘ beau monde^ will supply 
them. For the rest, if my introductory letters are successful, 
Madame de Grantmesnil will not be in bad company.” 

“You will' write to Madame de Grantmesnil ?” asked 
Bameau, pleadingly. 

“ Certainly I will, as soon ” 

“As soon as you have the prospectus, and the names of the 
collahorateurs^'^ interrupted Bameau. “ I hope to send you 
these in a very few days.” 

While Bameau was thus speaking, Savarin had seated him- 
self by the table, and his eye mechanically resting on the 
open MS. lighted by chance upon a sentence — an aphorism — 
embodying a very delicate sentiment in very felicitous diction. 
One of those choice condensations of thought, suggesting so 
much more than is said, which are never found in mediocre 
writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like truths 
seized by surprise. 

^^Parhleur exclaimed Savarin, in the impulse of genuine 
admiration, “ but this is beautiful ; what is more, it is 
original,” — ^and he read the words aloud. Blushing with 

A* 


10 


THE PARISIANS. 


Bhame and resentment, Isaura turned and hastily placed her 
hand on the MS. 

“ Pardon,” said Savarin, humbly ; “ I confess my sin, but 
it was so unpremeditated that it does not merit a severe pen- 
ance. Do not look at me so reproachfully. We all know 
that young ladies keep commonplace-books in which they 
enter passages that strike them in the works they read. And 
you have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gem. 
Do tell me where you found it. Is it somewhere in Lamar- 
tine?” 

“No,” answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and with an effort 
to withdraw the paper. Savarin gently detained her hand, 
and, looking earnestly into her tell-tale face, divined her 
secret. 

“ It is your own, Signorina ! Accept the congratulations 
of a very practiced and somewhat fastidious critic. If the 
rest of what you write resembles this sentence, contribute to 
Dameau’s journal, and I answer for its success.” 

Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious. 

“ My dear child,” resumed Savarin, drawing away the MS. 
from Isaura’s coy, reluctant clasp, “ do permit me to cast a 
glance over these papers. For what I yet know, there may 
be here more promise of fame than even you could gain as a 
singer.” 

The electric chord in Isaura’s heart was touched. Who 
cannot conceive what the young writer feels, especially the 
young woman-writer, when hearing the first cheery note of 
praise from the lips of a writer of established fame ? 

“ Nay, this cannot be worth your reading,” said Isaura, 


THE PARISIANS. 


11 


falteringly ; “ I have never written anything of the kind before, 
and this is a riddle to me. I know not/’ she added, with 
a sweet low laugh, “ why I began, nor how I should end it.” 

“ So much the better,” said Savarin ; and he took the MS., 
withdrew to a recess by the farther window, and seated him- 
self there, reading silently and quickly, but now and then 
with a brief pause of reflection. 

Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and 
began talking with her earnestly — earnestly, for it was about 
himself and his aspiring hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, 
more woman-like than author-like, ashamed even to seem 
absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back turned, 
in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her MS., — 
Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in the young 
fellow-author. Seeking to do so, she succeeded genuinely, for 
ready sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature. 

“Oh,” said Rameau, “I am at the turning-point of my 
life. Ever since boyhood I have been haunted with the 
words of Andre Chenier on the morning he was led to the 
scafibld : ‘ And yet there was something here,’ striking his 
forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong 
in the chase of a name ; I, underrated, uncomprehended, in- 
debted even for a hearing to the patronage of an amiable 
trifler like Savarin, ranked by petty rivals in a grade below 
themselves, — I now see before me, suddenly, abruptly pre- 
sented, the expanding gates into fame and fortune. Assist 
me, you !” 

“ Cut how ?” said Isaura, already forgetting her MS. ; and 
certainly Rameau did not refer to that. 


12 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ How echoed Rameau. “ How ! But do you not see— ^ 
or, at least, do you not conjecture — this journal of which 
Savarin speaks contains my present and my future ? Present 
independence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay, — ^and 
who shall say ? renown beyond that of the mere writer. Be- 
hind the gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new 
social edifice unperceived aris^ ; and in that edifice the halls 
of State shall be given to the men who help obscurely to build 
it — to men like me.” Here, drawing her hand into his own, 
fixing on her the most imploring gaze of his dark persuasive 
eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his adjuration, he 
added — “ Plead for me with your whole mind and heart ; use 
your uttermost influence with the illustrious writer whose 
pen can assure the fates of my journal.” 

Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, 
who announced unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham 
Vane. 


CHAPTER X. 

The Englishman halted at the threshold. His eye, passing 
rapidly over the figure of Savarin reading in the window- 
niche, rested upon Rameau and Isaura seated on the same 
divan, he with her hand clasped in both his own, and bending 
his face towards hers so closely that a loose tress of her hair 
seemed to touch his forehead. 

The Englishman halted, and no revolution which chano'es 


THE PARISIANS. 


13 


the habitudes and forms of States was ever so sudden as that, 
which passed without a word in the depths of his uncon- 
jectured heart. The heart has no history which philosophers 
can recognize. An ordinary political observer, contemplating 
the condition of a nation, may very safely tell us what effects 
must follow the causes patent to his eyes. But the wisest and 
most far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o’clock, cannot 
tell us what revulsions of his whole being may be made ere 
the clock strike two. 

As Isaura rose to greet her visitor, Savarin came from the 
window-niche, the MS. in his hand. 

“ Son of perfidious Albion,” said Savarin, gayly, “ we feared 
you had deserted the French alliance. Welcome back to 
Paris and the entente cor dialed 

“ Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome. But I must 
again quit Paris.” 

“ Soon to return, n'est-ce pa? ? Paris is an irresistible 
magnet to les beaux esprits, A propos of beaux esprits, be 
sure to leave orders with j(pir bookseller, if you have one, to 
enter your name as subscriber to a new journal.” 

“ Certainly, if M. Savarin recommends it.” 

He recommends it as a matter of course ; he writes in 
it,” said Bameau. 

“A sufficient guarantee for its excellence. What is the 
name of the journal?” 

“Not yet thought of,” answered Savarin. “Babes must 
be born before they are christened ; but it will be instruction 
enough to your bookseller to order the new journal to be 
edited by Gustave Rameau.” 


14 


THE PARISIANS. 


Bowing ceremoniously to the editor in prospect, Graham 
said, half ironically, “May I hope that in the department of 
criticism you will not he too hard upon poor Tasso?” 

“Never fear; the Signorina, who adores Tasso, will take 
him under her special protection,” said Savarin, interrupting 
Rameau’s sullen and embarrassed reply. 

Graham’s brow slightly contracted. “ Mademoiselle,” he 
said, “ is then to be united in the conduct of this journal with 
M. Gustave Rameau ?” 

“No, indeed!” said Isaura, somewhat frightened at the 
idea. 

“ But I hope,” said Savarin, “ that the Signorina may be- 
come a contributor too important for an editor to offend by 
insulting her favorites, Tasso included. Rameau and I came 
hither to entreat her influence with her intimate and illus- 
trious friend, Madame de Grantmesnil, to insure the success 
of our undertaking by sanctioning the announcement of her 
name as a contributor.” 

“ Upon social questions — such as the laws of marriage ?” 
said Graham-, with a sarcastic smile, which concealed the 
quiver of his lip and the pain in his voice. 

“Nay,” answered Savarin, “our journal will be too sportive, 
I hope, for matters so profound. We would rather have 
Madame de Grantmesnil’s aid in some short roman^ which 
will charm the fancy of all and offend the opinions of none. 
But since I came into the room I care less for the Signorina’s 
influence with the great authoress,” and he glanced signifi- 
cantly at the MS. 

“ How so?” asked Graham, his eye following the glance. 


THE V A 11 1 S T A N S. 


15 


“ If the writer of this MS. will conclude what she has 
begun, we shall be independent of Madame de Grantmesnil.” 

“ Fie !” cried Isaura, impulsively, her fice and neck bathed 
in blushes — “fie! such words are a mockery.” 

Graham gazed at her intently, and then turned his eyes on 
Savarin. He guessed aright the truth. “ Mademoiselle then 
is an author? — In the style of her friend Madame de Grant- 
mesnil?” 

“ Bah 1”^ said Savarin, “ I should indeed be guilty of 
mockery if I paid the Signorina so false a compliment as to 
say that in a first efibrt she attained to the style of one of 
the most finished sovereigns of language that “has ever swayed 
the literature of France. When I say, ‘Give us this tale 
completed, and I shall be consoled if the journal does not 
gain the aid of Madame de Grantmesnil,’ I mean that in 
these pages there is that nameless charm of freshness and 
novelty which compensates for many faults never committed 
by a practiced pen like Madame de Grantmesnil’s. My dear 
young lady, go on with this story — finish it. When finished, 
do not disdain any suggestions I may offer in the way of 
correction. And I will venture to predict to you so brilliant 
a career as author, that you will not regret should you resign 
for that career the bravos you could command as actress and 
singer.” The Englishman pressed his hand convulsively to 
his heart, as if smitten by a sudden spasm. But as his eyes 
rested on Isaura’s face, which had become radiant with the 
enthusiastic delight of genius when the path it would select 
opens before it as if by a flash from heaven, whatever of^ 
jealous irritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before 


16 


THE PARISIANS. 


have felt, was gone, merged in a sentiment of unutterable 
sadness and compassion. Practical man as he was, he knew 
so well all the dangers, all the snares, all the sorrows, all the 
scandals menacing name and fame, that in the world of Paris 
must beset the fatherless girl who, not less in authorship than 
on the stage, leaves the safeguard of private life forever be- 
hind her, — who becomes a prey to the tongues of the publia 
At Paris, how slender is the line that divides the authoress 
from the Bohemienne ! He sank into his chair silently, and 
passed his hand over his eyes, as if to shut out a vision of 
the future. 

Isaura, in hen excitement, did not notice the effect on her 
English visitor. She could not have divined such an effect 
as possible. On the contrary, even subordinate to her joy at 
the thought that she had not mistaken the instincts which 
led her to a nobler vocation than that of the singer, that the 
cage-bar was opened, and space bathed in sunshine was in- 
viting the new-felt wings, — subordinate even to that joy was a 
joy more wholly, more simple, woman’s. “ If,” thought she 
in this joy, “ if this be true, my proud ambition is realized ; 
all disparities of worth and fortune are annulled between me 
and him to whom I would bring no shame of mesalliance 
Poor dreamer, poor child ! 

“ You will let me see what you have written,” said Rameau, 
somewhat imperiously, in the sharp voice habitual to him, 
and which pierced Graham’s ear like a splinter of glass. 

“ No — not now ; when finished.” 

“ You will finish it ?” 

“ Oh, yes j how can I help it, after such encouragement ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 17 

She held out her hand to Savarin, who kissed it gallantly ; 
then her eyes intuitively sought Graham’s. By that time he 
had recovered his self-possession: he met her look tranquilly 
and with a smile ; but the smile chilled her — she knew not 
why. 

The conversation then passed upon books and authors of 
the day, and was chiefly supported by the satirical pleasantries 
of Savarin, who was in high good spirits. 

Graham, who, as we know, had come with the hope of see^ 
ing Isaura alone, and with the intention of uttering words 
which, however guarded, might yet in absence serve as links 
of union, now no longer coveted that interview, no longer 
meditated those words. He soon rose to depart. 

“ Will you dine with me to-morrow ?” asked Savarin. 
“ Perhaps I may induce the Signorina and Bameau to offer 
you the temptation of meeting them.” 

“ By to-morrow I shall be leagues away.” 

Isaura’s heart sank. This time the MS. was fairly for- 
gotten. 

“You never said you were going so soon,” cried Savarin, 
“ When do you come back, vile deserter ?” 

“ I cannot even guess. Monsieur B,ameau, count me 
among your subscribers. Mademoiselle, my best regards to 
Signora Venosta. When I see you again, no doubt you will 
have become famous.” 

Isaura here could not control herself. She rose impul- 
sively, and approached him, holding out her hand, and attempt- 
ing a smile. 

“ But not famous in the way that you warned me from,” 
VoL. II. 2 


18 


THE PARISIANS. 


she said, in whispered tones. “ You are friends with me 
still?” It was like the piteous wail of a child seeking to 
make it up with one who wants to quarrel, the child knows 
not why. 

Graham was moved, but what could he say? Could he 
have the right to warn her from this profession also,— forbid 
all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant ? Even 
a declared and accepted lover might well have deemed that 
that would be to ask too much. He replied, “ Yes, always a 
friend, if you could ever need one.” Her hand slid from 
his, and she turned away, wounded to the quick. 

“ Have you your coupi at the door ?” asked Savarin. 

“ Simply a fiacre^ 

“And are going back at once to Paris?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Will you kindly drop me in the Rue de Rivoli ?” 

“ Charmed to be of use.” 


CHAPTER XL 

As the fiacre bore to Paris Savarin and Graham, the 
former said, “ I cannot conceive what rich simpleton could 
entertain so high an opinion of Gustave Rameau as to select 
a man so young, and of reputation, though promising, so 
undecided, for an enterprise which requires such a degree of 
tact and judgment as the conduct of a new journal, and a 


THE PARISIANS. 


19 


journal, too, wliicli is to address itself to tlie heau monde. 
However, it is not for me to criticise a selection wliich brings 
a godsend to myself” 

“To yourself? You jest; you have a journal of your 
own. It can only be through an excess of good-nature that 
you lend your name and pen to the service of M. Gustave 
Rameau.” 

“ IMy good nature does not go to that extent. It is Rameau 
who confers a service upon me. Peste ! man cher, we French 
authors have not the rents of you rich English milords. And 
though I am the most economical of our tribe, yet that journal 
of mine has failed me of late ; and this morning I did not 
exactly see how I was to repay a sum I had been obliged to 
borrow of a money-lender — for I am too proud to borrow of 
friends, and too sagacious to borrow of publishers — when in 
walks cc cher petit Gustave with an offer for a few trifles 
towards starting this new-born journal, which makes a new 
man of me. Now I am in the undertaking, my amour 
propre and my reputation are concerned in its success, and I 
shall take care that collahorateurs of whose company I am 
not ashamed are in the same boat. But that charming girl, 
Isaura ! What an enigma the gift of the pen is ! No one 
can ever guess who has it until tried.” 

“ The young lady’s MS., then, really merits the praise you 
bestowed on it?” 

“ Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which 
I did not bestow. For in a flrst work faults insure success 
as much as beauties. Anything better than tame correctness. 
Yes, her first work, to judge by what is written, must make 


20 


THE PARISIANS. 


a liit — a great hit. And that will decide her career. A singer, 
an actress, may retire, often does when she marries an author. 
But once an author always an author.” 

-‘Ah! is it so? If you had a beloved daughter, Savarin, 
would you encourage her to be au author?” 

“ Frankly, no — ^principally because in that case the chances 
are that she would marry an author; and French authors, at 
least in the imaginative school, make very uncomfortable 
husbands.” 

“Ah, you think the Signorina will marry one of those un- 
comfortable husbands — M. Rameau, perhaps ?’ ’ 

“Rameau! Hein! nothing more likely. That beautiful 
face of his has its fascination. , And, to tell you the truth, my 
wife, who is a striking illustration of the truth that what 
woman wills Heaven wills, is bent upon that improvement in 
Gustave’s moral life which she thinks a union with Made- 
moiselle Cicogna would achieve. At all events, the fair 
Italian would have in Rameau a husband who would not 
suffer her to. bury her talents under a bushel. If she succeeds 
as a writer (by succeeding I mean making money), he will 
see that her ink-bottle is never empty; and if she don’t suc- 
ceed as a writer, he will take care that the world shall gain 
an actress or a singer. For Gustave Rameau has a great taste 
for luxury and show ; and whatever his wife can make, I will 
venture to say that he will manage to spend.” 

“ I thought you had an esteem and regard for Mademoiselle 
Cicogna. It is Madame your wife, I suppose, who has a 
grudge against her?’’ 

“ On the contraiy, my wife idolizes her.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


21 


“ Savages sacrifice to their idols the things they deem of 
value. Civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves — * 
and to a thing that is worthless.” 

“ Rameau is not worthless ; he has beauty, and youth, and 
talent. My wife thinks more highly of him than I do ; but 
I must respect a man who has found admirers so sincere as to 
set him up in a journal and give him carte blanche ior terms 
to contributors. I know of no man in Paris more valuable 
to me. His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand 
francs. I own I do not think him likely to he a very safe 
husband ; but then French female authors and artists seldom 
take any husbands e:x:cept upon short leases. There are no 
vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure atmosphere of art. 
Women of genius, like Madame de Grantmesnil, and perhaps 
like our charming young friend, resemble canary-birds— to 
sing their best you must separate them from their mates.” 

The Englishman suppressed a groan, and turned the con- 
versation. 

When he had set down his lively companion, Yane dis- 
missed his fiacre^ and walked to his lodgings musingly. 

“No,” he said, inly; “I must wrench myself from the 
very memory of that haunting face, — the friend and pupil of 
Madame de Grantmesnil, the associate of Gustave Rameau, 
the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant to that pure atmos- 
phere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial prejudices ! 
Could I — whether I be rich or poor — see in her the ideal of an 
English wife ? As it is — as it is — with this mystery which 
oppresses me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insolu- 
ble, — as it is, how fortunate that I did not find her alone — 


22 


THE PARISIANS. 


did not utter the words that would fain have leapt from my 
heart — did not say, ‘ I may not be the rich man I seem, but 
in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because struggle 
and labor are the sinews of ambition ! Should I be rich, will 
you adorn my station? should I be poor, will you enrich 
poverty with your smile? And can you, in either case, 
forego — really, painlessly forego, as you led me to hope — the 
pride in your own art ?’ My ambition were killed did I 
marry an actress, a singer. Better that than the hungerer 
after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a 
career which admits of no retirement — ^the woman to whom 
marriage is no goal — who remains to the last the property 
of the public, and glories to dwell in a house of glass into 
which every bystander has a right to peer. Is this the ideM 
of an Englishman’s wife and home? No — no! — woe is me, 
no!" 


BOOK ■V'l. 


CHAPTER 1. 

A FEW weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a 
gay party of men were assembled at supper in one of the 
private salons of the Maison Dorie. The supper was given 
by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were, though in various 
ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion were not 
unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguer- 
rapd de Vandemar, by whose supremacy as “ lion” Frederic 
still felt rather humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring 
them familiarly together. Art, Literature, and the Bourse 
had also their representatives — in Henri Bernard, a rising 
young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honored with his 
patronage, the Vicomte de Brez^, and M. Savarin. Science 
was not altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable 
delegate in the person of the eminent physician to whom 
we have been before introduced — Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in 
Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in London ; and 
Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus, 
was no unfrequent or ungenial guest at any banquet in 
which the Graces relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also 
represented at that social gathering by a warrior bronzed 
and decorated, lately arrived from Algiers, on which arid soil 
he had achieved many laurels and the rank of ColoneL 

23 


24 


THE PARISIANS. 


Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might; for Duplessia 
had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse. 

“Ah, cher M. Savarin,” says Enguerrand de Vandemar, 
whose patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that 
he is always instinctively polite, “what a^masterpiece in its 
way is that little paper of yours in the ^ Sens Commun^ 
upon the connection between the national character and the 
national diet ! so genuinely witty ! for wit is but truth made 
amusing.” 

“You flatter me,” replied Savarin, modestly; “but I own 
1 do think there is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. 
Perhaps, however, the character of a people depends more on 
its drinks than its food. The wines of Italy— heady, irrita^ 
ble, ruinous to the digestion — contribute to the character 
which belongs to active brains and disordered livers. The 
Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. 
The English common people drink beer, and the beerish char- 
acter is stolid, rude, but stubborn and enduring. The English 
middle class imbibe port and sherry ; and with these strong 
potations their ideas become obfuscated. Their character has 
no liveliness ; amusement is not one of their wants ; they sit 
at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their bever- 
age in the dullness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy 
is more vivacious and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines 
of France, which it is the mode with them to prefer ; but 
still, like all plagiarists, they are imitators, not inventors — 
they borrow our wines and copy our manners. The Ger* 
mans ” 

“Insolent barbarians!” growled the French Colonel, twirl* 


THE PARISIANS. 


25 


ing his moustache; “if the Emperor were not in his dotage, 
their Sadowa would ere this have cost them their Rhine.” 

“ The Germans,” resumed Savarin, unheeding the inter- 
ruption, “ drink acrid wines, varied with beer, to which last 
their commonalty owes a quasi resemblance, in stupidity and 
endurance, to the English masses. Acrid wines rot the teeth : 
Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy. All 
people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a 
martyr to toothache. Werter was written in one of those 
paroxysms which predispose genius to suicide. Rut the 
German character is not all toothache ; beer and tobacco step 
in to the relief of Rhenish acridities, blend philosophy with 
sentiment, and give that patience in detail which distinguishes 
their professors and their generals. Besides, the German 
wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity. 
Taken with sour-crout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes 
of self-conceit. A German has little of French vanity; he 
has German self-esteem. He extends the esteem of self to 
those around him ; his home, his village, his city, his coun- 
try — all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to himself to 
defend them. Give him his pipe and his sabre — and, M. le 
Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him.” 

“ P-r-r !” cried the Colonel ; “ but we have had the Rhine.” 

“We did not keep it. And I should not say I had a franc- 
piece if I borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back 
the next day.” 

Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all 
raised against M. Savarin. Enguerrand, like a man of good 
ton^ hastened to change the conversation. 

VOL. II.— B 


26 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and 
toothaches. We drinkers of the champagne, all our own, 
have only pity for the rest of the human race. This new 
journal ‘Le Sens Commun^ has a strange title, M. Savarin.” 

“ Yes ; ‘Le Sens Commun' is not common in Paris, where 
we all have too much genius for a thing so vulgar.” 

“ Pray,” said the young painter, “ tell me what you mean 
by the title — ^Le Sens Commun^ It is mysterious.” 

“ True,” said Savarin ; “ it may mean the Sensus communis 
of the Latins, or the Good Sense of the English. The Latin 
phrase signifies the sense of the common interest ; the Eng- 
lish phrase, the sense which persons of understanding have 
in common. I suppose the inventor of our title meant the 
latter signification.” 

“ And who was the inventor ?” asked Bacourt. 

“ That is a secret which I do not know myself,” answered 
Savarin. 

“ I guess,” said Enguerrand, “ that it must be the same 
person who writes the political leaders. They are most 
remarkable ; for they are so unlike the articles in other 
journals, whether those journals be the best or the worst. 
For my own part, I trouble my head very little about politics, 
and shrug my shoulders at essays which reduce the govern- 
ment of flesh and blood into mathematical problems. But 
these articles seem to be written by a man of the world, and, 
as a man of the world myself, I read them.” 

“ But,” said the Vicomte de Breze, who piqued himself on 
the polish of his style, “ they are certainly not the composi- 
tion of any eminent writer. No eloquence, no sentiment; 


THE PARISIANS. 


27 


though I ought not to speak disparagingly of a fellow-con- 
tributor.” 

“ All that may be very true,” said Savarin, “ but M. En- 
guerrand is right. The papers are evidently the work of a 
man of the world, and it is for that reason that they have 
startled the public and established the success of ’■Le Sens 
Commun.^ But wait a week or two longer. Messieurs, and 
then tell me what you think of a new roman^ by a new writer, 
which we shall announce in our impression to-morrow. I 
shall be disappointed indeed if that does not charm you. No 
lack of eloquence and sentiment there.” 

“ I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment,” said En- 
guerrand. “ Your editor, Gustave Bameau, sickens me of 
them, with his ‘ Starlit Meditations in the Streets of Paris,’ 
morbid imitations of Heine’s enigmatical ‘ Evening Songs.’ 
Your journal would be perfect if you could suppress the 
editor.” 

“ Suppress Gustave Bameau !” cried Bernard the painter ; “ I 
adore his poems, full of heart for poor suffering humanity.” 

“ Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up in himself,” 
said the physician, dryly, “ and a great deal of the suffering is 
bile. But d, propos of your new journal, Savarin, there is a 
paragraph in it to-day which excites my curiosity. It says 
that the Vicomte de Maul^on has arrived in Paris, after many 
years of foreign travel, and then, referring modestly enough 
to the reputation for talent which he had acquired in early 
youth, proceeds to indulge in a prophecy of the future politi- 
cal career of a man who, if he have a ^rain of sens communy 
must think that the less said about him the better. I remem- 


28 


THE PARISIANS. 


ber him well ; a terrible mauvais ■ but superbly hand- 
some. There was a shocking story about the jewels of a 
foreign duchess, which obliged him to leave Paris.” 

“ But,” said Savarin, “ the paragraph you refer to hints that 
that story is a groundless calumny, and that the true reason 
for Be Mauleon’s voluntary self-exile was a very common one 
among young Parisians — he had lavished away his fortune. 
He returns when, either by heritage or his own exertions, he 
has secured elsewhere a competence.” 

“ Nevertheless I cannot think that society will receive him,” 
said Bacourt. “ When he left Paris, there was one joyous 
sigh of relief among all men who wished to avoid duels and 
keep their wives out of temptation. Society may welcome 
back a lost sheep, but not a reinvigorated wolf.” 

“ I beg your pardon, mon cherj^ said Enguerrand ; “ society 
has already opened its fold to this poor ill-treated wolf. Two 
days ago Louvier summoned to his house the surviving rela- 
tions or connections of I)e Mauleon — among whom are the 
Marquis de Bochebriant, the Counts Be Passy, Be Beauvil- 
liers. Be Chavigny, my father, and of course his two sons — 
and submitted to us the proofs which completely clear the 
Vicomte de Mauleon of even a suspicion of fraud or dishonor 
in the afiair of the jewels. The proofs include the written 
attestation of the Buke himself, and letters from that noble- 
man after Be Mauleon’s disappearance from Paris, expressive 
of great esteem, and, indeed, of great admiration, for the 
Vicomte’s sense of honor and generosity of character. The 
result of this family council was that we all went in a body 
to call on Be Mauleon. And he dined with my father that 


THE PARISIANS. 


29 


same day. You know enough of the Count de Vandemar, 
and, I may add, of my mother, to be sure that they are 
both, in their several ways, too regardful of social con- 
ventions to lend their countenance even to a relation with- 
out well weighing the pros and com. And as for Kaoul, 
Bayard himself could not be a greater stickler on the point 
of honor.” 

This declaration was followed by a silence that had the 
character of stupor. 

At last Duplessis said, “ But what has Louvier to do in 
this gal&re f Louvier is no relation of that well-born mw- 
rien; why should he summon your family council?” 

“ Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early 
and intimate friendship with De Mauleon, who, he said, came 
to consult him on arriving at Paris, and who felt too proud or 
too timid to address relations with whom he had long dropped 
all intercourse. An intermediary was required, and Louvier 
volunteered to take that part on himself; nothing more 
natural, nor more simple. By the way, Alain, you dine with 
Louvier to-morrow, do you not ? — a dinner in honor of our 
rehabilitated kinsman. I and Raoul go.” 

“ Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, what- 
ever might be his errors in youth, on which,” added Alain, 
slightly coloring, “ it certainly does not become me to be 
severe, must have suffered the most poignant anguish a man 
of honor can undergo — viz., honor suspected ; and who now, 
whether by years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot recog- 
nize a likeness to the character I have just heard given to 
him as mauvais sujet and vaurien'' 


30 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Bravo !” cried Enguerrand ; “ all honor to courage — ^and 
at Paris it requires great courage to defend the absent.” 

“ Nay.” answered Alain, in a low voice. “ The gentilhomme 
who will not defend another gentilhomme traduced would, as 
a soldier, betray a citadel and desert a flag.” 

“ You say M. de Mauleon is changed,” said Be Br4ze ; 
“ yes, he must be growing old. No trace left of his good 
looks?” 

“ Pardon me,” said Enguerrand, “ he is hien conservi^ and 
has still a very handsome head and an imposing presence. 
But one cannot help doubting whether he deserved the for- 
midable reputation he acquired in youth ; his manner is so 
singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so winningly 
modest, so void of pretense, and his mode of life is as simple 
as that of a Spanish hidalgo.” 

“ He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Christo,’ 
said Buplessis, “ and buy himself into notice, like that hero 
of romance ?” 

“ Certainly not : he says very frankly that he has but a very 
small income, but more than enough for his wants — richer than 
in his youth; for he has learned content. We may dismiss 
the hint in ‘ Le Sens Commwi about his future political 
career : at least he evinces no such ambition.” 

“ How could he as a Legitimist ?” said Alain, bitterly. 

What department would elect him ?” 

“ But is he a Legitimist ?” asked Be Br4z6. 

“I take it for granted that he must be that,” answered 
Alain, haughtily, “ for he is a Be Maul4on.” 

“ His father was as good a Be Mauleon as himself, I pre- 


THE PARISIANS. 


31 


Bume,” rejoined De Brez4, dryly ; “ and he enjoyed a place at 
the Court of Louis Philippe, which a Legitimist could 
scarcely accept. Victor did not, I fancy, trouble his head 
about politics at all, at the time I remember him ; but to 
judge by his chief associates, and the notice he received from 
the Princes of the House of Orleans, I should guess that he 
had no predilections in favor of Henri V.” 

“ I should regret to think so,” said Alain, yet more 
haughtily, “ since the He Mauleons acknowledge^the head of 
their house in the representative of the Rochebriants.” 

“ At all events,” said Duplessis, “ M. de Maul4on appears 
to be a philosopher of rare stamp. A Parisian who has 
known riches and is contented to be poor, is a phenomenon I 
should like to study.” 

“You have that chance to-morrow evening, M. Duplessis,” 
said Enguerrand. 

“ What ! at M. Louvier’s dinner ? Nay, I have no other 
acquaintance with M. Louvier than that of the Bourse, and 
the acquaintance is not cordial.” 

“ I did not mean at M. Louvier’s dinner, but at the Duch- 
esse de Tarascon’s ball. You, as one of her special favorites, 
will doubtless honor her riunion^ 

“ Yes ; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball. 
But the Duchesse is Imperialist. M. de Mauleon seems to 
be either a Legitimist, according to M. le Marquis, or an 
Orleanist, according to our friend De Breze.” 

“ What of that ? Can there be a more loyal Bourbonite 
than De Bochebriant ? and he goes to the ball. It is given 
out of the season, in celebration of a family marriage. And 


32 


THE PARISIANS. 


the Duchesse de Tarascon is connected with Alain, and there- 
fore with De Mauleon, though but distantly.” 

“ Ah ! excuse my ignorance of genealogy.” 

“ As if the genealogy of noble names were not the history 
of France 1” muttered Alain, indignantly. 


CHAPTER II. 

Yes, the ^‘Sens Commun' was a success ; it had made a sen- 
sation at starting ; the sensation was on the increase. It is 
difficult for an Englishman to comprehend the full influence 
of a successful journal at Paris ; the station — political, liter- 
ary, social — which it confers on the contributors who efiect 
the success. M. Lebeau had shown much more sagacity in 
selecting Gustave Rameau for the nominal editor than Savarin 
supposed or my reader might detect. In the first place, Gus- 
tave himself, with all his defects of information and solidity 
of intellect, was not without real genius, and a sort of genius 
that, when kept in restraint, and its field confined to sentiment 
or sarcasm, was in unison with the temper of the day : in the 
second place, it was only through Gustave that Lebeau could 
have got at Savarin ; and the names which that brilliant 
writer had secured at the outset would have sufficed to draw 
attention to the earliest numbers of the Sem Commun^'' 
despite a title which did not seem alluring. But these names 
alone could not have sufficed to circulate the new journal to 
the extent it had already reached. This was due to the 


THE PARISIANS. 


33 


curiosity excited by leading articles of a st}le new to the 
Parisian public, and of which the authorship defied conjecture. 
They were signed Pierre Firmin — supposed to be a nom de 
plume^ as that name was utterly unknown in^ the world of 
letters. They affected the tone of an impartial observer; 
they neither espoused nor attacked any particular party ; they 
laid down no abstract doctrines of government. But some- 
how or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless, 
yet never vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of 
uneasy discontent, a foreboding of some destined change in 
things established, without defining the nature of such change, 
without saying whether it would be for good or for evil. In 
his criticisms upon individuals, the writer was guarded and 
moderate — the keenest-eyed censor of the press could not have 
found a pretext for interference with expression of opinions 
so polite. Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but 
that little was not disrespectful ; yet, day after day, the articles 
contributed to sap the Empire. All malcontents of every 
shade comprehended, as by a secret of freemasonry, that in 
this journal they had an ally. Against religion not a word 
was uttered, yet the enemies of religion bought that journal ; 
still, the friends of religion bought it too, for those articles 
treated with irony the philosophers on paper who thought 
that their contradictory crotchets could fuse themselves into 
any single Utopia, or that any social edifice, hurriedly run up 
by the crazy few, could become a permanent habitation for the 
turbulent many, without the clamps of a creed. 

The tone of these articles always corresponded with the 
title of the journal — '■'‘Common Sensed It was to common 
B* 3 


34 


THE PARISIANS. 


sense that it appealed — appealed in the utterance of a man 
who disdained the subtle theories, the vehement declamation, 
the credulous beliefs, or the inflated bombast, which constitute 
so large a portion of the Parisian press. The articles rather 
resembled certain organs of the English press, which profess 
to be blinded by no enthusiasm for anybody or anything, which 
find their sale in that sympathy with ill nature to which Huet 
ascribes the popularity of Tacitus, and, always quietly under- 
mining institutions with a covert sneer, never pretend to a 
spirit of imagination so at variance with common sense as a 
conjecture how the institutions should be rebuilt or replaced. 

Well, somehow or other, the journal, as I was saying, hit 
the taste of the Parisian public. It intimated, with the easy 
grace of an unpremeditated agreeable talker, that French 
society in all its classes was rotten, and each class was willing 
to believe that all the others were rotten, and agreed that 
unless the others were reformed there was something very 
unsound in itself. 

The ball at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s was a brilliant event. 
The summer was far advanced ; many of the Parisian holiday- 
makers had returned to the capital, but the season had not 
commenced, and a ball at that time of year was a very un- 
wonted event. But there was a special occasion for this fHe 
— a marriage between a niece of the Duchesse and the son of 
a great official in high favor at the Imperial Court. 

The dinner at Louvier’s broke up early, and the music for 
the second waltz was sounding when Enguerrand, Alain, and 
the Vicomte de Mauleon ascended the stairs. Baoul did not 
accompany them ; he went very rarely to any balls — -never to 


THE PARISIANS. 


35 


One given by an Imperialist, however nearly related to him 
the Imperialist might be. But, in the sweet indulgence of 
his good nature, he had no blame for those who did go — not 
for Enguerrand, still less, of course, for Alain. 

Something, too, might well here be said as to his feeling 
towards Victor de Maul4on. He had joined in the family 
acquittal of that kinsman as to the grave charge of the jewels; 
the proofs of innocence thereon seemed to him unequivocal 
and decisive, therefore he had called on the Yicomte and 
acquiesced in all formal civilities shown to him. But, such 
acts of justice to a fellow-^e?t^t7Aow?me and a kinsman duly 
performed, he desired to see as little as possible of the Vicomte 
de Mauleon. He reasoned thus : — “ Of every charge which 
Society made against this man he is guiltless. Bub of all the 
claims to admiration which society accorded to him, before it 
erroneously condemned, there are none which make me covet 
his friendship, or suffice to dispel doubts as to what he may 
be when society once more receives him. And the.man is so 
captivating that I should dread his influence over myself did 
I see much of him.” 

Baoul kept his reasonings to himself, for he had that sort 
of charity which indisposes an amiable man to be severe on 
bygone offenses. In the eyes of Enguerrand and Alain, and 
such young votaries of the mode as they could influence, Vic- 
tor de Mauleon assumed almost heroic proportions. In the 
affair which had inflicted on him a calumny so odious, it was 
clear that he had acted with chivalrous delicacy of honor. 
And the turbulence and recklessness of his earlier years, 
redeemed as they were, in the traditions of his contemporaries, 


36 


THE PARISIANS. 


by courage and generosity, were not offenses to which young 
Frenchmen are inclined to be harsh. All question as to the 
mode in which his life might have been passed during his 
long absence from the capital, was merged in the respect due 
to the only facts known, and these were clearly proved in his 
pieces justijicatives. 1st. That he had served under another 
name in the ranks of the army in Algiers ; had distinguished 
himself there for signal valor, and received, with promotion, 
the decoration of the cross. His real name was known only 
to his Colonel, and on quitting the service the Colonel placed 
in his hands a letter of warm eulogy on his conduct and 
identifying him as Victor de Mauleon. 2dly. That in Cali- 
fornia he had saved a wealthy family from midnight murder, 
fighting single-handed against and overmastering three ruf- 
fians, and declining all other reward from those he had pre- 
served than a written attestation of their gratitude. In all 
countries valor ranks high in the list of virtues ; in no coun- 
try does it so absolve from vices as it does in France. 

But as yet Victor de Mauleon’s vindication was only known 
by a few, and those belonging to the gayer circles of life. 
How he might be judged by the sober middle class, which 
constitutes the most important section of public opinion to a 
candidate for political trusts and distinctions, was another 
question. 

The Huchesse stood at the door to receive her visitors. 
Duplessis. was seated near the entrance, by the side of a dis- 
tinguished member of the Imperial Government, with whom 
he was carrying on a whispered conversation. The eye of 
the financier, however, turned towards the doorway as Alain 


THE PARISIANS. 


37 


and Enguerrand entered, and, passing over their familiar 
faces, fixed itself attentively on that of a much older man, 
whom Enguerrand was presenting to the Duchesse, and in 
whom Duplessis rightly divined the Vicomte de Mauleon. 
Certainly if no one could have recognized M. Lebeau in the 
stately personage who had visited Louvier, still less could one 
who had heard of the wild feats of the roi des viveurs in his 
youth reconcile belief in such tales with the quiet modesty of 
mien which distinguished the cavalier now replying, with 
bended head and subdued accents, to the courteous welcome 
of the brilliant hostess. But for such dilference in attributes 
between the past and the present De Mauleon, Duplessis had 
been prepared by the conversation at the Matson Doric. And 
now, as the Vicomte, yielding his place by the Duchesse to 
some new-comer, glided on, and, leaning against a column, 
contemplated the gay scene before him with that expression 
of countenance, half sarcastic, half mournful, with which 
men regard, after long estrangement, the scenes of departed 
joys, Duplessis felt that no change in that man had impaired 
the force of character which had made him the hero of reck- 
less coevals. Though wearing no beard, not even a moustache, 
there was something emphatically masculine in the contour 
of the close-shaven cheek and resolute jaw, in a forehead 
brojj-d at the temples, and protuberant in those organs over 
the eyebrows which are said to be significant of quick percep- 
tion and ready action in the lips, when in repose compressed, 
perhaps somewhat stern in their expression, but pliant and 
mobile when speaking, and wonderfully fascinating when they 
smiled. Altogether, about this Victor de Mauleon there was 


38 


THE PARISIANS. 


a nameless distinction, apart from that of conventional ele- 
gance. You would have said, “ That is a man of some marked 
individuality, an eminence of some kind in himself” You 
would not be surprised to hear that he was a party- leader, a 
skilled diplomatist, a daring soldier, an adventurous traveler, 
but you would not guess him to be a student, an author, an 
artist. 

While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de Mauleon, 
all the while seeming to lend an attentive ear to the whispered 
voice of the Minister by his side, Alain passed on into the 
ball-room. He was fresh enough to feel the exhilaration of 
the dance. Enguerrand (who had survived that excitement, 
and who habitually deserted any assembly at an early hour 
for the cigar and whist of his club) had made his way to De 
Mauleon, and there stationed himself. The lion of one gen- 
eration has always a mixed feeling of curiosity and respect 
for the lion of a generation before him, and the young Van- 
demar had conceived a strong and almost an affectionate 
interest in this discrowned king of that realm in fashion 
which, once lost, is never to be regained ; for it is only youth 
that can hold its sceptre and command its subjects. 

“ In this crowd, Vicomte,” said Enguerrand, “ there must 
be many old acquaintances of yours.” * 

“ Perhaps so ; but as yet I have only seen new faces.” . 

As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man decorated with the 
grand cross of the Legion, and half a dozen foreign ordei-s, 
lending his arm to a lady of the same age radiant in dia- 
monds, passed by towards the ball-room, and in some sudden 
swerve of his person, occasioned by a pause of his companion 


T U E PARISIANS. 


39 


to adjust her train, he accidentally brushed against De Mau- 
l4on, whom he had not before noticed. Turning round to 
apologize for his awkwardness, he encountered the full gaze 
of the Vicomte, started, changed countenance, and hurried on 
his companion. 

“ Do you not recognize his Excellency ?” said Enguerrand, 
smiling. “ His cannot be a new face to you.” 

“ Is if; the Baron de Lacy ?” asked De Maul4on. 

“ The Baron de Lacy, now Count d’Epinay, ambassador at 

the Court of , and, if report speak true, likely soon to 

exchange that post for portefeuiUe of Minister.” 

“ He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little 
Baron. He was then my devoted imitator, and I was not 
proud of the imitation.” 

“ He has got on by always clinging to the skirts of some 
one stronger than himself — to yours, I daresay, when, being 
a parvenu despite his usurped title of Baron, he aspired to 
the entrie into clubs and salons. The entrSe thus obtained, 
the rest followed easily : he became a millionaire through a 
wife’s dot, and an ambassador through the wife’s lover, who 
is a power in the state.” 

“ But he must have substance in himself. Empty bags 
cannot be made to stand upright. Ah ! unless I mistake, I 
see some one I knew better. Yon pale, thin man, also with 
the grand cross, — surely that is Alfred Hennequin. Is he too 
a decorated Imperialist? I left him a socialistic republican.” 

“ But, I presume, even then an eloquent avocat. He got 
into the Chamber, spoke well, defended the coup-d'etat. He 
has just been made Pr^fet of the great department of the 


40 


THE PARISIANS. 


, a popular appointment. He bears a high cbaractei 

Pray renew your acquaintance with him ; he is coming this 
way.” 

“Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaintance with me ? 
I doubt it.” 

But, as De Mauleon said this, he moved from the column 
and advanced towards the Prefet. Enguerrand followed him, 
and saw the Vicomte extend his hand to his old acquaintance. 
The Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, “ Pardon 
me — some mistake.” 

“ Allow me, M. Hennequin,” said Enguerrand, interposing, 
and wishing good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkward- 
ness of introducing himself, — “ allow me to reintroduce you 
to my kinsman, whom the lapse of years may well excuse you 
for forgetting, the Vicomte de Mauleon.” 

Still the Prefet did not accept the hand. He bowed with 
formal ceremony, said, “ I was not aware that M. le Vicomte 
had returned to Paris,” and, moving to the doorway, made 
his salutation to the hostess, and disappeared. 

“ The insolent !” muttered Enguerrand. 

“ Hush !” said De Mauleon, quietly ; “ I can fight no more 
duels — especially with a Prefet. But I own I am weak 
enough to feel hurt at such a reception from Hennequin, for 
he owed me some obligations — small, perhaps, but still they 
were such as might have made me select him, rather than 
Louvier, as the vindicator of my name, had I known him to 
be so high placed. But a man who has raised himself into 
an authority may well be excused for forgetting a friend whose 
character needs defense. I forgive him.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


41 


There was something pathetic in the Vicomte’s tone, which 
touched Enguerrand’s warm if light heart. But De Maul6on 
did not allow him time to answer. He went on quickly 
through an opening in the gay crowd, which immediately 
closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no more that 
evening. 

Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the Minister, drawn 
thence by a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge 
by a cavalier with whom she had been dancing. She was the 
only daughter of Duplessis, and he valued her even more than 
the millions he had made at the Bourse. “ The Princess,” 
she said, “ has been swept off in the train of some German 
Boyalty ; so, petit phre, I must impose myself on thee.” 

The Princess, a Bussian of high rank, was the chaperon 
that evening of Mademoiselle Valerie Duplessis. 

“ And I suppose I must take thee back into the ball-room,” 
said the financier, smiling proudly, “ and find thee partners.” 

“ I don’t want your aid for that. Monsieur ; except this 
quadrille, my list is pretty well fiUed up.” 

“ And I hope the partners will be pleasant. Let me know 
who they are,” he whispered, as they threaded their way into 
the ball-room. 

The girl glanced at her tablet. 

“ Well, the first on the list is Milord somebody, with an 
unpronounceable English name.” 

“ Beau cavalier ?” 

“ No ; ugly, old too — thirty at least.” 

Duplessis felt relieved. He did not wish his daughter to 
fall in love with an Englishman. 


42 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ And the next ?” 

“ The next ” she said, hesitatingly, and he observed 

that a soft blush accompanied the hesitation. 

“ Yes, the next. Not English too ?” 

“ Oh, no ; the Marquis de Rochebriant.” 

“ Ah ! who presented him to thee ?” 

“Thy friend, M. de Br4z6.” 

Ruplessis again glanced at his daughter’s face; it was 
bent over her bouquet. 

“ Is he ugly also ?” 

“Ugly!” exclaimed the girl, indignantly; “why, he is 
” She checked herself, and turned away her head. 

Duplessis became thoughtful. He was glad that he had 
accompanied his child into the ball-room ; he would stay there 
and keep watch on her and Rochebriant also. 

Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant. 
That young noble’s too obvious pride of race had nettled him, 
not the less that the financier himself was vain of his ances- 
try. Perhaps he still disliked Alain, but the dislike was now 
accompanied with a certain, not hostile, interest ; and if he 
became connected with the race, the pride in it might grow 
contagious. 

They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came 
up to claim his promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his 
manner was the same as usual — not more cordial, not less 
ceremoniously distant. A man so able as the financier cannot 
be without quick knowledge of the human heart. 

“ If disposed to fall in love with Val4rie,” thought Du- 
plessis, “ he would have taken more pains to please her father. 


THE PARISIANS. 


43 


Well, thank heaven, there are better matches to he found for 
her than a noble without fortune and a Legitimist without 
career.” 

In fact, Alain felt no more for Yalerie than for any other 
pretty girl in the room. In talking with the Vicomte de 
Br4ze in the intervals of the dance, he had made some passing 
remark on her beauty ; De Br6ze had said, “ Yes, she is 
charming ; I will present you,” and hastened to do so before 
Rochebriant even learned her name. So introduced, he could 
but invite her to give him her first disengaged dance ; and 
when that was fixed, he had retired, without entering into 
conversation. 

Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that 
effort of speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure ; and, 
of course, he began with the first commonplace which pre- 
sented itself to his mind. 

“ Do you not think it a very pleasant ball. Mademoiselle?” 

“ Yes,” dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie’s 
rosy lips. 

“ And not overcrowded, as most balls are.” 

Valerie’s lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly. 

The obligations of the figure now caused a pause, Alain 
racked his brains and began again : 

“ They tell me the last season was more than usually gay ; 
of that I cannot judge, for it was wellnigh over when I 
came to Paris for the first time.” 

Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than 
her childlike face had yet shown, and said, this time dis- 
tinctly, ‘‘ This is my first ball. Monsieur le Marquis.” 


44 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ One lias only to look at Mademoiselle to divine tliat fact, 
replied Alain, gallantly. 

Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance ; but 
the ice between the two was now broken. And when the 
quadrille was concluded, and Rochebriant led the fair Valerie 
back to her father’s side, she felt as if she had been listening 
to the music of the spheres, and that the music had ne w 
suddenly stopped. Alain, alas for her, was under no such 
pleasing illusion. Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, 
but very insipid, compared with the brilliant conversation 
of the wedded Parisiennes with whom he more habitually 
danced ; and it was with rather a sensation of relief that he 
made his parting bow and receded into the crowd of by- 
standers. 

Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the assemblage, walking 
slowly through the deserted streets towards his apartment. 
The civilities he had met at Louvier’s dinner-party, and the 
marked distinction paid to him by kinsmen of rank and posi- 
tion so unequivocal as Alain and Enguerrand, had softened 
his mood and cheered his spirits. He had begun to question 
himself whether a fair opening to his political ambition was 
really forbidden to him under the existent order of things, 
whether it necessitated the employment of such dangerous 
tools as those to which anger and despair had reconciled his 
intellect. But the pointed way in which he had been shunned 
or slighted by the two men who belonged to political life — to 
men who in youth had looked up to himself, and whose daz- 
zling career of honors was identified with the Imperial system 
— reanimated his fiercer passions and his more perilous designs 


THE PARISIANS. 


45 


The frigid accost of Hennequin more especially galled him ; 
it wounded not only his pride but his heart; it had the. 
venom of ingratitude ; and it is the peculiar privilege of in- 
gratitude to wound hearts that have learned to harden them- 
selves to the hate or contempt of men to whom no services 
have been rendered. In some private affair concerning his 
property, De Mauleon had had occasion to consult Hennequin, 
then a rising young avocat. Out of that consultation a friend- 
ship had sprung up, despite the differing habits and social 
grades of the two men. One day, calling on Hennequin, he 
found him in a state of great nervous excitement. The avocat 
had received a public insult in the salon of a noble, to whom 
De Mauleon had introduced him, from a man who pretended 
to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin was attached, 
and indeed almost affianced. The man was a notorious spa 
dassin — a duelist little less renowned for skill in all weapons 
than De Mauleon himself The affair had been sueh that 
Hennequin’s friends assured him he had no choice but to chal- 
lenge this bravo. Hennequin, brave enough at the bar, was 
no hero before sword-point or pistol. He was utterly ignorant 
of the use of either weapon ; his death in the encounter with 
an antagonist so formidable seemed to him certain ; and life 
was so precious, — an honorable and distinguished career open- 
ing before him, marriage with the woman he loved : still he 
had the Frenchman’s point of honor. He had been told that 
he must fight ; well, then, he must. He asked De MauMon 
to be one of his seconds, and, in asking him, sank in his chair, 
covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears. 

“ Wait til to-morrow,” said De Mauleon ; “ take no step 


46 


THE PARISIANS. 


till then. Meanwhije, you are in my hands, and I answer foi 
your honor.” 

On leaving Hennequin, Victor sought the spadassin at the 
club of which they were both members, and contrived, with- 
out reference to Hennequin, to pick a quarrel with him. A 
challenge ensued ; a duel with swords took place the next 
morning. De Mauleon disarmed and wounded his antagonist, 
not gravely, but sufficiently to terminate the encounter. He 
assisted to convey the wounded man to his apartment, and 
planted himself by his bedside, as if he were a friend. 

“ Why on earth did you fasten a quarrel on me ?” asked 
the spadassin; “ and why, having done so, did you spare my 
life ? for your sword was at my heart when you shifted its 
point and pierced my shoulder.” 

“ I will tell you, and, in so doing, beg you to accept my friend- 
ship hereafter, on one condition. In the course of the day, 
write or dictate a few civil words of apology to M. Hennequin. 
Ma foi ! every one will praise you for a generosity so becom- 
ing in a man who has given such proofs of courage and skill, 
to an avocat who has never handled a sword nor fired a pistol.” 

That same day De Maul4on remitted to Hennequin an 
apology for heated words freely retracted, which satisfied all 
his friends. For the service thus rendered by De Mauleon 
Hennequin declared himself everlastingly indebted. In fact, 
he entirely owed to that friend his life, his marriage, his 
honor, his career. 

“ And now,” thought De Mauleon, “ now, when he cculd 
so easily requite me, — now he will not even take my hand. 
Is human nature itself at war with me?” 


CHAPTER III. 


Nothing could be simpler than the apartment of the Vi- 
comte de Mauleon, in the second story of a quiet old-fashioned 
street. It had been furnished at small cost out of his savings. 
Yetj on the whole, it evinced the good taste of a man who 
had once been among the exquisites of the polite world. 

You felt that you were in the apartment of a gentleman, 
and a gentleman of somewhat severe tastes and of sober 
matured years. He was sitting the next morning in the 
room which he used as a private study. Along the walls 
were arranged dwarf bookcases, as yet occupied by few books, 
most of them books of reference, others cheap editions of the 
French classics in prose— no poets, no romance-writers — with 
a few Latin authors also in prose — Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. 
He was engaged at his desk writing — a book with its leaves 
open before him, Paul Louis Courier,” that model of political 
irony and masculine style of composition. There was a ring 
at his door-bell. The Vicomte kept no servant. He rose 
and answered the summons. He recoiled a few paces on 
recognizing in his visitor M. Hennequin. 

The Prefet this time did not withdraw his hand ; he ex- 
tended it, but it was with a certain awkwardness and timidity. 

“ I thought it my duty to call on you, Vicomte, thus early, 
having already seen M. Enguerrand de Vandemar. He has 

shown me the copies of the pihces which were inspected by 

47 


48 


THE PARISIANS. 


your distinguished kinsmen, and which completely clear you 
of the charge that, grant me your pardon when I say, seemed 
to me still to remain unanswered when I had the honor to 
meet you last night.” 

“ It appears to me, M. Hennequin, that you, as an avocat 
so eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of 
<hat fact.” 

“ M. le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the 
time of the unfortunate affair in which you were involved.” 

“ But when you returned to Paris, you might perhaps have 
deigned to make inquiries so affecting the honor of one you 
had called a friend, and for whom you had professed” — Be 
Maul4on paused ; he disdained to add — “ an eternal gratitude.” 

Hennequin colored slightly, but replied with self-posses- 
sion — 

“ I certainly did inquire. I did hear that the charge against 
you with regard to the abstraction of the jewels was with- 
drawn — that you were therefore acquitted by law ; but I 
heard also that society did not acquit you, and that, finding 
this, you had quitted France. Pardon me again, no one 
would listen to me when I attempted to speak on your behalf. 
But now that so many years have elapsed, that the story is 
imperfectly remembered, that relations so high -placed receive 
you so cordially, — now, I rejoice to think that you will have 
no difiiculty in regaining a social position never really lost, 
but for a time resigned.” 

“ I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express. I 
was reading the other day in a lively author some pleasant re- 
marks on the effects of medisance or calumny upon our im- 


THE PARISIANS. 


49 


pressionable Parisian public. ‘ If,’ says the writer, ‘ I found 
myself accused of having put the two towers of Notre Dame 
into my waistcoat-pocket, I should not dream of defending 
myself ; I should take to flight. And,’ adds the writer, ‘ if 
my best friend were under the same accusation, I should be 
so afraid of being considered his accomplice that I should 
put my best friend outside the door.’ Perhaps, M. Henne- 
quin, I was seized with the first alarm. Why should I blame 
you if seized with the second ? Happily, this good city of 
Paris has its reactions. And you can now offer me your 
hand. Paris has by this time discovered that the two towers 
of Notre Dame are not in my pocket.” 

There was a pause. De Mauleon had resettled himself at 
his desk, bending over his papers, and his manner seemed to 
imply that he considered the conversation at an end. 

But a pang of shame, of remorse, of tender remembrance, 
shot across the heart of . the decorous, worldly, self-seeking 
man, who owed all that he now was to the ci-devant vaurien 
before him. Again he stretched forth his hand, and this 
time grasped De Mauleon’s warmly. “ Forgive me,” he said, 
feelingly and hoarsely ; “ forgive me. I was to blame. By 
character, and perhaps by the necessities of my career, I am 
over-timid to public opinion, public scandal. Forgive me. 
Say if in anything now I can requite, though but slightly, 
the service I owe you.” 

De Maul4on looked steadily at the Prifet^ and said slowly, . 

Would you serve me in turn ? are you sincere ?” 

The Prifet hesitated a moment, then answered firmly, 
« Yes.” 

VOL. II. — C 


4 


50 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank opinion — not as 
lawyer, not as Prefet^ but as a man who knows the present 
state of French society. Give that opinion without respect 
to my feelings one way or the other. Let it emanate solely 
from your practiced judgment.” 

“Be it so,” said Hennequin, wondering what was to come, 

De Maul4on resumed- — 

“ As you may remember, during my former career I had 
no political ambition. I did not meddle with politics. In 
the troubled times that immediately succeeded the fall of 
Louis Philippe I was but an epicurean looker-on. Grant 
that, so far as admission to the salmis is concerned, I shall 
encounter no difficulty in regaining position. But as regards 
the Chamber, public life, a political career — can I have any 
fair opening under the Empire? You pause. Answer, as 
you have promised, frankly.” 

“ The difficulties in the way of a political career would bo 
very great.” 

“ Insuperable ?” 

“ I fear so. Of course, in my capacity of Prifet I have 
no small influence in my department in support of a Govern- 
ment candidate. But I do not think that the Imperial Gov- 
ernment could, at this time especially, in which it must bo 
very cautious in selecting its candidates, be induced to recom 
mend you. The affair of the jewels would be raked up — 
your vindication disputed, denied — the fact that for so many 
years you have acquiesced in that charge without taking steps 
to refute it — ^your antecedents, even apart from that charge — 
your present want of property (M. Enguerrand tells me your 


THE PARISIANS. 


51 


income is but moderate) — the absence of all previous repute 
in public life. No ; relinquish the idea of political contest — • 
it would expose you to inevitable mortifications, to a failure 
that would even jeopardize the admission to the salons which 
you are now gaining. You could not be a Government 
candidate.” 

“ Granted. I may have no desire to be one ; but an oppo- 
sition candidate, one of the Liberal party?” 

“As an Imperialist,” said Hennequm, smiling gravely, 
“ and holding the office I do, it would not become me to en- 
courage a candidate against the Emperor’s Government. But, 
speaking with the frankness you solicit, I should say that 
youi chances there are infinitely worse. The opposition are 
in a pitiful minority — the most eminent of the Liberals can 
scarcely gain seats for themselves ; great local popularity or 
property, high established repute for established patriotism, 
or proved talents of oratory and statesmanship, are essential 
qualifications for a seat in the opposition ; and even these do 
not suffice for a third of the persons who possess them. Be 
again what you were before, the hero of salons, remote from 
the turbulent vulgarity of politics.” 

“ I am answered. Thank you once more.* The service I 
rendered you once is requited now.” < 

“ No, indeed — no ; but will you dine with me quietly to- 
day, and allow me to present to you my wife and two children, 
bom since we parted ? I say to-day, for to-morrow I return 
to my Prifecturey 

“ I am infinitely obliged by your invitation, but to-day I 
dine with the Count de Beauvilliers, to meet some of the 


52 


THE PARISIANS. 


Corps Diplomatique. I must make good my place in the 
salons^ since you so clearly show me that I have no chance of 
one in the Legislature — unless ” 

“ Unless what?” 

“ Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which 
the scum comes uppermost.” 

“No fear of that. The subterranean barracks and railway 
have ended forever the rise of the scum — the reign of the 
canaille and its barricades.” 

“ Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful hommages d 
3Iadame." 

After that day the writings of Pierre Firmin in “Xe Sens 
Commun," though still keeping within the pale of the law, 
became more decidedly hostile to the Imperial system, still 
without committing their author to any definite programme 
of the sort of government that should succeed it. 


CHAPTER lY. 

The weeks gl4ded on. Isaura’s MS. had passed into print; 
it came out in the French fashion of feuilletons — a small de- 
tachment at a time. A previous flourish of trumpets by 
Savarin and the clique at his command insured it attention, 
if not from the general public, at least from critical and 
literary coteries. Before the fourth installment appeared, it 
had outgrown the patronage of the coteries ; it seized hold of 
the public. It was not in the last school in fashion ; inci- 


THE PARISIANS. 


53 


dents were not crowded and violent — they were few and sim- 
ple, rather appertaining to an elder school, in which poetry of 
sentiment and grace of diction prevailed. That very resem- 
blance to old favorites gave it the attraction of novelty. In 
a word, it excited a pleased admiration, and great curiosity 
was felt as to the authorship. When it oozed out that it 
was by the young lady whose future success in the musical 
world had been so sanguinely predicted by all who had heard 
her sing, the interest wonderfully increased. Petitions to be 
introduced to her acquaintance were showered upon Savarin : 
before she scarcely realized her dawning fame, she was drawn 
from her quiet home and retired habits ; she was ftUe and 
courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief. 
That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia ; on the other, that 
realm of politer fashion which in every intellectual metropolis, 
but especially in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed light from 
luminaries in art and letters. But the very admiration she 
obtained somewhat depressed, somewhat troubled her: after 
all, it did not differ from that which was at her command as 
a singer. 

On the one hand, she shrank instinctively from the caresses 
of female authors and the familiar greetings of male authors 
wl.o frankly lived in philosophical disdain of the conventions 
respected by sober, decorous mortals. On the other hand, in 
the civilities of those who, while they courted a rising celebrity, 
still held their habitual existence apart from the artistic world, 
there was a certain air of condescension, of patronage towards 
the young stranger with no other protector than Signora Ve- 
nosta, the ci-devant public singer, and who had made her dehut 


54 


THE PARISIANS. 


/ 


in a journal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, which, however 
disguised by exaggerated terms of praise, wounded her pride 
of woman in flattering her vanity as author. Among this 
latter set were wealthy, high-born men, who addressed her as 
woman — as woman beautiful and young — with words of gal- 
lantry that implied love, but certainly no thought of marriage: 
many of the most ardent were, indeed, married already. But 
once launched into the thick of Parisian hospitalities, it was 
difficult to draw back. The Venosta wept at the thought of 
missing some lively soirie^ and Savarin laughed at her shrink- 
ing fastidiousness as that of a child’s ignorance of the world. 
But still she had her mornings to herself; and in those morn- 
ings, devoted to the continuance of her work (for the com- 
mencement was in print before a third was completed), she 
forgot the commonplace world that received her in the even- 
ings. Insensibly to herself, the tone of this work had changed 
as it proceeded. It had begun seriously, indeed, but in the 
seriousness there was a certain latent joy. It might be the 
joy of having found vent of utterance ; it might be rather a 
joy still more latent, inspired by the remembrance of Gra- 
ham’s words and looks, and by the thought that she had 
renounced all idea of the professional career which he had 
evidently disapproved. Life then seemed to her a bright pos- 
session. We have seen that she had begun her roman with- 
out planning how it should end. She had, however, then 
meant it to end, somehow or other, happily. Now the lustre 
had gone from life — the tone of the work was saddened — it 
foreboded a tragic close. But for the general reader it be- 
came, with every chapter, still more interesting: the poor 


THE PARISIANS. 


55 


cliild tad a singularly musical gift of style — a music which 
Jent itself naturally to pathos. Every very young writer 
knows how his work, if one of feeling, will color itself from 
the views of some truth in his innermost self, and, in propor- 
tion as it does so, how his absorption in the work increases, 
till it becomes part and parcel of his own mind and heart. 
The presence of a hidden sorrow may change the fate of the 
beings he has created, and guide to the grave those whom, in 
a happier vein, he would have united at the altar. It is not 
till a later stage of experience and art that the writer escapes 
from the influence of his individual personality and lives in 
existences that take no colorings from his own. Genius usu- 
ally must pass through the subjective process before it gains 
the objective. Even a Shakspeare represents himself in the 
Sonnets before no trace of himself is visible in a Falstafi* or 
a Lear. 

No news of the Englishman — not a word. Isaura could 
not but feel that in his words, his looks, that day in her own 
garden, and those yet happier days at Enghien, there had 
been more than friendship : there had been love — love enough 
to justify her own pride in whispering to herself, “And I 
love too.” But then that last parting ! how changed he was 
— how cold I She conjectured that jealousy of Rameau might, 
in some degree, account for the coldness when he first entered 
the room, but surely not when he left ; surely not when she had 
overpassed the reserve of her sex, and implied, by signs rarely 
misconstrued by those who love, that he had no cause for jeal- 
ousy of another. Yet he had gone — parted with her pointedly 
as a friend, a mere friend. How foolish she had been to think 


56 


THE PARISIANS. 


this rich ambitious foreigner could ever have meant to be more ! 

- In the occupation of her work she thought to banish his image ; 
but in that work the image was never absent ; there were pas- 
sages in which she pleadingly addressed it, and then would 
cease abruptly, stifled by passionate tears. Still she fancied that 
the work would reunite them ; that in its pages he would hear 
her voice and comprehend her heart. And thus all praise of 
the work became very, very dear to her. 

At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from Graham 
The letter was dated Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the English- 
man said he might yet be some time detained. In the letter 
Graham spoke chiefly of the new journal ; in polite compli- 
ment of Savarin’s own efi’usions ; in mixed praise and con- 
demnation of the political and social articles signed Pierre 
Firmin — praise of their intellectual power, condemnation of 
their moral cynicism. “The writer,” he said, “reminds me 
of a passage in which Montesquieu compares the heathen 
philosophers to those plants which the earth produces in places 
that have never seen the heavens. The soil of his experience 
does not grow a single belief ; and as no community can exist 
without a belief of some kind, so a politician without belief 
can but help to destroy ; he cannot reconstruct. Such writers 
corrupt a society ; they do not reform a system.” He closed 
his letter with a reference to Isaura ; “ Do, in your reply, my 
dear Savarin, tell me something about your friends Signora 
Venosta and the Signorina, whose work, so far as yet pub- 
lished, I have read with admiring astonishment at the power 
or a female writer so young to rival the veteran practitioners 
of fiction in the creation of interest in imaginary characters. 


THE PARISIANS. 


57 

• 

and in sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over- 
romantic and exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in 
human nature not awakened in our trite everyday existence. 
I presume that the beauty of the roman has been duly ap- 
preciated by a public so refined as the Parisian, and that the 
name of the author is generally known. No doubt she is now 
much the rage of the literary circles, and her career as a 
writer may be considered fixed. Pray present my congratula- 
tions to the Signorina when you see her.” 

Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some days before 
he called on Isaura and carelessly showed it to her. She 
took it to the window to read, in order to conceal the trem- 
bling of her hands. In a few minutes she returned it silently. 

“ Those Englishmen,” said Savarin, “ have not the art of 
compliment. I am by no means flattered by what he says of 
my trifles, and I daresay you are still less pleased with this 
chilly praise of your charming tale ; but the man means to be 
civil.” 

“ Certainly,” said Isaura, smiling faintly. 

“ Only think of Rameau,” resumed Savarin ; “ on the 
strength of his salary in the ‘ Sens Commun' and on the 
chateaux en Espagne which he constructs thereon, he has 
already furnished an apartment in the Chauss^e d’Antin, and 
talks of setting up a coupe in order to maintain the dignity 
of letters when he goes to dine with the duchesses who are 
some day or other to invite him. Yet I admire his self-con- 
fidence, though I laugh at it. A man gets on by a spring in 
his own mechanism, and he should always keep it wound up. 
Rameau will make a figure. I used to pity him ; I begin to 


58 


THE PARISIANS. 


respect : nothing succeeds like success. But I see I am spoil- 
ing your morning. Au revoir^ mon enfant^ 

Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of mournful wonder- 
ment over the words referring to herself in Graham’s letter. 
Bead though but once, she knew them by heart. What ! did 
he consider those characters she had represented as wholly 
imaginary? In one — the most prominent, the most attract- 
ive — could he detect no likeness to himself? What! did 
he consider so “over-romantic and exaggerated” sentiments 
which couched appeals from her heart to his ? Alas I in 
matters of sentiment it is the misfortune of us men that even 
the most refined of us often grate upon some sentiment in a 
woman, though she may not be romantic — not romantic at 
all, as people go, — some sentiment which she thought must 
be so obvious if we cared a straw about her, and which, 
though we prize her above the Indies, is, by our dim, horn- 
eyed, masculine vision, undiscernible. It may be something 
in itself the airiest of trifles, — the anniversary of a day on 
which the. first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a violet gathered, 
a misunderstanding cleared up ; and of that anniversary we 
remember no more than we do of our bells and coral. But 
she — she remembers it ; it is no bells and coral to her. Of 
course, much is to be said in excuse of man, brute though he 
be. Consider the multiplicity of his occupations, the practi- 
cal nature of his cares. But, granting the validity of all such 
excuse, there is in man an original obtuseness of fibre as 
regards sentiment in comparison with the delicacy of woman’s. 
It comes, perhaps, from the same hardness of constitution 
which forbids us the luxury of ready tears. Thus it is very 


THE PARISIANS. 


59 


difficult for the wisest man to understand thoroughly a woman. 
Goethe says somewhere that the highest genius in man must 
have much of the woman in it. If this be true, the highest 
genius alone in man can comprehend and explain the nature 
of woman ; because it is not remote from him, but an integral 
part of his masculine self I am not sure, however, that it 
necessitates the highest genius, but rather a special idiosyn- 
crasy in genius, which the highest may or may not have. I 
think Sophocles a higher genius than Euripides; but Eu- 
ripides has that idiosyncrasy, and Sophocles not. I doubt 
whether women would accept Goethe as their interpreter with 
the same readiness with which they would accept Schiller. 
Shakspeare, no doubt, excels all poets in the comprehension 
of women, in his sympathy with them in the woman-part of 
his nature which Goethe ascribes to the highest genius ; but, 
putting aside that “ monster,” I do not remember any English 
poet whom we should consider conspicuously eminent in that 
lore, unless it be the prose poet, nowadays generally under- 
rated and little read, who wrote the letters of Clarissa Har- 
lowe. I say all this in vindication of Graham V ane, if, 
though a very clever man in his way, and by no means unin- 
structed in human nature, he had utterly failed in compre- 
hending the mysteries which to this poor woman-child seemed 
to need no key for one who really loved her. But we have 
said somewhere before in this book that music speaks in a lan- 
guage which cannot explain itself except in music. So speaks, 
in the human heart, much which is akin to music. Fiction 
(that is, poetry, whether in form of rhyme or prose) speaks 
thus pretty often. A reader must be more commonplace 


60 


THE PARISIANS. 


than, I trust, my gentle readers are, if he suppose that when 
Isaura symbolized the real hero of her thoughts in the fabled 
hero of her romance she depicted him as one of whom the 
world could say, “That is Graham Vane.” I doubt if even 
a male poet would so vulgarize any woman whom he thor- 
oughly reverenced and loved. She is too sacred to him to be 
thus unveiled to the public stare ; as the sweetest of all ancient 
love-poets says well — 

*‘Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ille sinu.** 

But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, to let the 
world know, “ that is the man I love and would die for I” — if 
such a girl be, she has no touch of the true woman-genius, 
and certainly she and Isaura have nothing in common. Well, 
then, in Isaura’s invented hero, though she saw the archetypal 
form of Graham Vane — saw him as in her young, vague, 
romantic dreams, idealized, beautified, transfigured, — he would 
have been the vainest of men if he had seen therein the 
reflection of himself. On the contrary, he said, in the spirit 
of that jealousy to which he was too prone, “Alas! this, 
then, is some ideal, already seen perhaps, compared to which 
how commonplace am I !” and, thus persuading himself, no 
wonder that the sentiments surrounding this unrecognized 
archetype appeared to him over-romantic. His taste acknowl- 
edged the beauty of form which clothed them ; his heart 
envied the ideal that inspired them. But they seemed so 
remote from him; they put the dream-land of the writer 
farther and farther from his work-day real life. 

In this frame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and 


THE PARISIANS. 


61 


the answer he received hardened it still more. Savarin had 
replied, as was his laudable wont in correspondence, the very 
day he received Graham’s letter, and therefore before he had 
even seen Isaura. In his reply, he spoke much of the success 
her work had obtained ; of the invitations showered upon her, 
and the sensation she caused in the salons; of her future 
career, with hope that she might even rival Madame de Grant- 
mesnil some day, when her ideas became emboldened by 
maturer experience and a closer study of that model of elo- 
quent style, — saying that the young editor was evidently 
becoming enamored of his fair contributor, and that Madame 
Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina’s 
roman would end in the death of the heroine and the mar- 
riage of the writer. 


CHAPTER V. 

And still the weeks glided on ; autumn succeeded to sum- 
mer, the winter to autumn : the season of Paris was at its 
height. The wondrous Capital seemed to repay its Imperial 
embellisher by the splendor and the joy of its fetes. But 
the smiles on the face of Paris were hypocritical and hollow. 
The Empire itself had passed out of fashion. Grave men 
and impartial observers felt anxious. Napoleon had re- 
nounced les idees NopoUomennes. He was passing into the 
category of constitutional sovereigns, and reigning, not by 
his old undivided prestige, but by the grace of party. The 


62 


THE PARISIANS. 


press was free to circulate complaints as to tlie past and de- 
mands as to the future, beneath which the present reeled — 
ominous of earthquake. People asked themselves if it were 
possible that the Empire could coexist with forms of govern- 
ment not imperial, yet not genuinely constitutional, with a 
majority daily yielding to a minority. The basis of universal 
suffrage was sapped. About this time the articles in the 
“ Sens Commun” signed Pierre Firmin, were creating not 
only considerable sensation, but marked effect on opinion ; 
and the sale of the journal was immense. 

Necessarily the repute and the position of Gustave Rameau, 
as the avowed editor of this potent journal, rose with its 
success. Nor only his repute and position ; bank-notes of 
considerable value were transmitted to him by the publisher, 
with the brief statement that they were sent by the sole pro- 
prietor of the paper as the editor’s fair share of profit. The 
proprietor was never named, but Rameau took it for granted 
that it was M. Lebeau. M. Lebeau he had never seen since 
the day he had brought him the list of contributors, and was 
then referred to the publisher, whom he supposed M. Lebeau 
had secured, and received the first quarter of his salary in 
advance. The salary was a trifle compared to the extra profits 
thus generously volunteered. He called at Lebeau’s office, 
and saw only the clerk, who said that his chef was abroad. 

Prosperity produced a marked change for the better, if not 
in the substance of Rameau’s character, at least in his man- 
ners and social converse. He no longer exhibited that rest- 
less envy of rivals which is the most repulsive symptom of 
vanity diseased He pardoned Isaura her success; nay, he 


THE PARISIANS. 


63 


was even pleased at it. The nature of her work did not 
clash with his own kind of writing. It was so thoroughly 
woman-like that one could not compare it to a man’s. More- 
over, that success had contributed largely to the profits by 
which he had benefited, and to his renown as editor of the 
journal which accorded place to this new-found genius. But 
there was a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy with 
the success of his fair young contributor. He had imper- 
ceptibly glided into love with her — a love very different from 
that with which poor Julie Caumartin flattered herself she 
had inspired the young poet. Isaura was one of those women 
for whom, even in natures the least chivalric, love — however 
ardent — cannot fail to be accompanied with a certain rever- 
ence, — the reverence with which the ancient knighthood, in 
its love for women, honored the ideal purity of womanhood 
itself. Till then Rameau had never revered any one. 

On her side, brought so frequently into communication 
with the young conductor of the journal in which she wrote, 
Isaura entertained for him a friendly, almost sister-like 
afiection. 

I do not think that, even if she had never known the 
Englishman, she would have really become in love with Ra- 
meau, despite the picturesque beauty of his countenance, and 
the congeniality of literary pursuits ; hut perhaps she might 
have fancied herself in love with him. And till one, whether 
man or woman, has known real love, fancy is readily mistaken 
for it. But, little as she had seen of Graham, and that little 
not in itself wholly favorable to him, she knew in her heart 
of hearts that his' image would never be replaced by one 


64 


THE PARISIANS. 


equally dear. Perhaps in those qualities that placed him in 
opposition to her she felt his attractions. The poetical in 
woman exaggerates the worth of the practical in man. Still, 
for Rameau her exquisitely kind and sympathizing nature 
conceived one of those sentiments which in woman are almost 
angel -like. We have seen in her letters to Madame de 
Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her with a com- 
passionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her 
perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes. But 
now those attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be ap- 
parent to her, and the compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, 
it was thus so far increased, that it was impossible for any 
friendly observer to look at the beautiful face of this youth, 
prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindliness of pity. 
His prosperity had brightened and sweetened the expression 
of that face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of decay ; 
rather perhaps deepened them, for the duties of his post 
necessitated a regular labor, to which he had been unaccus- 
tomed, and the regular labor necessitated, or seemed to him 
to necessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants. He imbibed 
absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united 
opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she 
knew of his liaison with the “ Ondine” of his muse ; she saw 
only the increasing delicacy of his face and form, contrasted 
by his increased geniality and liveliness of spirits, and the 
contrast saddened her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him 
compassion. She recognized and respected in him the yearn- 
ings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the 
arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition. She saw, 


THE PARISIANS. 


65 


too, those struggles between a higher and a lower self, to 
which a weak degree of genius, united with a strong degree 
of arrogance, is so often subjected. Perhaps she overesti- 
mated the degree of genius, and what, if rightly guided, it 
could do ; but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier 
instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward. And, as if she were 
twenty years older than himself, she obeyed that desire in re- 
monstrating and warning and urging ; and the young man took 
all these “ preachments” with a pleased submissive patience. 
Such, as the new year dawned upon the grave of the old on^ 
was the position between these two. And nothing more was 
heard from Graham Vane. 


CHAPTER VI. 

It has now become due to Graham Vane, and to his 
pldtee in the estimation of my readers, to explain somewhat 
more distinctly the nature of the quest in prosecution of 
which he had sought the aid of the Parisian police, and, 
under an assumed name, made the acquaintance of M. Le 
beau. 

The best way of discharging this duty will perhaps be to 
place before the reader the contents of the letter which passed 
under Graham’s eyes on the day on which the heart of the 
writer ceased to beat. 


VoL. II. 


5 


66 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Confidential. 

“ To he opened immediately after my deaths and before the 
perusal of my will. 

“ Richard King, 

“ To Graham Vane, Esq. 

“ My dear Graham, — By the ditection on the envelope 
of this letter, ‘ Before the perusal of my will,’ I have wished 
to save you from the disappointment you would naturally ex- 
perience if you learned my bequest without being prevised of 
the conditions which I am about to impose upon your honor. 
You will see ere you conclude this letter that you are the only 
man living to whom I could intrust the secret it contains and 
the task it enjoins. 

“ You are aware that I was not horn to the fortune that 
passed to me by the death of a distant relation, who had, in 
my earlier youth, children of his own. I was an only son, 
left an orphan at the age of sixteen with a very slender pit- 
tance. My guardians designed me for the medical profession. 
I began my studies at Edinburgh, and was sent to Paris to 
complete them. It so chanced that there I lodged in the 
same house with an artist named Auguste Duval, who, failing 
to gain his livelihood as a painter in what — for his style was 
ambitious — is termed the Historical School, had accepted the 
humbler calling of a drawing-master. He had practiced in 
that branch of the profession for several years at Tours, having 
a good clientele among English families settled there. This 
cUentUe^ as he frankly confessed, he had lost from some irregu- 
larities of conduct. He was not a bad man, but of convivial 


THE PARISIANS. 


67 


temper, and easily led into temptation. He had removed to 
Paris a few months before I made his acquaintance. He ob- 
tained a few pupils, and often lost them as soon as gained. He 
was unpunctual and addicted to drink. But he had a small 
pension, accorded to him, he was wont to say mysteriously, by 
some high-born kinsfolk, too proud to own connection with a 
drawing-master, and on the condition that he should never 
name them. He never did name them to me, and I do not 
know to this day whether the story of this noble relationship 
was true or false. A pension, however, he did receive quar- 
terly from some person or other, and it was an unhappy pro- 
vision for him. It tended to make him an idler in his proper 
calling ; and whenever he received the payment he spent it in 
debauch, to the neglect, while it lasted, of his pupils. This 
man had residing with him a young daughter, singularly beau- 
tiful. You may divine the rest. I fell in love with her — a 
love deepened by the compassion with which she inspired 
me. Her father left her so frequently, that, living on the 
same floor, we saw much of each other. Parent and child 
were often in great need — lacking even fuel or food. Of 
course I assisted thfem to the utmost of my scanty means. 
Much as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not blind 
to great defects in her character. She was capricious, vain, 
aware of her beauty, and sighing for the pleasures or the 
gauds beyond her reach. I knew that she did not love me — 
there was little, indeed, to captivate her fancy in a poor, 
threadbare medical student — and yet I fondly imagined that 
,my own persevering devotion would at length win her afiec- 
• tions. I spoke to her father more than once of my hope 


68 


THE PARISIANS. 


some day to make Louise my wife. This hope, I must frankly 
acknowledge, he never encouraged. On the contrary, he 
treated it with scorn, — ‘ His child with her beauty would look 
much higher ;’ but he continued all the same to accept my 
assistance and to sanction my visits. At length my slender 
purse was pretty well exhausted, and the luckless drawing- 
master was so harassed with petty debts that further credit 
became impossible. At this time I happened to hear from a 
fellow-student that his sister, who was the principal of a ladies’ 
school in Cheltenham, had commissioned him to look out for 
a first-rate teacher of drawing, with whom her elder pupils 
could converse in French, but who should be sufficiently 
acquainted with English to make his instructions intelligible 
to the young. The salary was liberal, the school large and of 
high repute, and his appointment to it would open to an able 
teacher no inconsiderable connection among private families. 
I communicated this intelligence to Duval. He caught at it 
eagerly. He had learned at Tours to speak English fluently; 
and as his professional skill was of high order, and he was 
popular with several eminent artists, he obtained certificates 
as to his talents, which my fellow-student forwarded to Eng- 
land with specimens of Duval’s drawings. In a few days the 
offer of an engagement arrived, was accepted, and Duval and 
his daughter set out for Cheltenham. At the eve of their 
departure, Louise, profou..dly dejected at the prospect of ban- 
ishment to a foreign country, and placing no trust in her 
father’s reform to steady habits, evinced a tenderness for me 
hitherto new— she wept bitterly. She allowed me to believe 
that her tears flowed at the thought of parting with me, and 


THE PARISIANS. 


69 


5ven besought me to accompany them to Cheltenham— if only 
for a few days. You may suppose how delightedly I com- 
plied with the request. Duval had been about a week at the 
watering-place, and was discharging the duties he had under- 
taken with such unwonted steadiness and regularity that I 
began sorrowfully to feel I had no longer an excuse for not 
returning to my studies at Paris, when the poor teacher was 
seized with a fit of paralysis. He lost the power of movement, 
and his mind was affected. The medical attendant called in 
said that he might linger thus for some time, but that, even 
if he recovered his intellect, which was more than doubtful, 
he would never be able to resume his profession. I could not 
leave Louise in circumstances so distressing. I remained. 
The little money Duval had brought from Paris was now ex- 
hausted ; and when the day on which he had been in the 
habit of receiving his quarter’s pension came round, Louise 
was unable even to conjecture how it was to be applied for. 
It seems that he had always gone for it in person, but to whom 
he went was a secret which he had never divulged. And at 
this critical juncture his mind was too enfeebled even to com- 
prehend us when we inquired. I had already drawn from 
the small capital on the interest of which I had maintained 
myself; I now drew out most of the remainder. But this 
was a resource that could not last long. Nor could I, without 
seriously compromising Louise’s character, be constantly in 
the house with a girl so young, and whose sole legitimate pro- 
tector was thus afflicted. There seemed but one alternative 
to that of abandoning her altogether — viz., to make her my 
wife, to conclude the studies necessary to obtain my diploma, 


70 


THE PARISIANS. 


and purchase some partnership in a small country practice 
with the scanty surplus that might be left of my capital. I 
placed this option before Louise timidly, for I could not bear 
the thought of forcing her inclinations. She seemed much 
moved by what she called my generosity : she consented — we 
were married. I was, as you may conceive, wholly ignorant 
of French law. We were married according to the English 
ceremony and the Protestant ritual. Shortly after our mar- 
riage we all three returned to Paris, taking an apartment in a 
quarter remote from that in which we had before lodged, in 
order to avoid any harassment to which such small creditv^rs 
as Duval had left behind him might subject us. I resumed 
my studies with redoubled energy, and Louise was necessarily 
left much alone with her poor father in the daytime. The 
defects in her character became more and more visible. She 
reproached me for the solitude to which I condemned her ; our 
poverty galled her ; she had no kind greeting for me when I 
returned at evening, wearied out. Before marriage she had not 
loved me — after marriage, alas ! I fear she hated. We had been 
returned to Paris some months when poor Duval died : he had 
never recovered his faculties, nor had we ever learned froni 
whom his pension had been received. Very soon after her 
father’s death I observed a singular change in the humor and 
manner of Louise. She was no longer peevish, irascible, reproach- 
ful, but taciturn and thoughtful. She seemed to me under the 
influence of some suppressed excitement, her cheeks flushed 
and her eye abstracted. At length, one evening when I re- 
turned I found her gone. She did not come back that night 
nor the next day. It was impossible for me to conjecture 


THE PARISIANS. 


71 


what had become of h*er. She had no friends, so far as I 
knew — no one had visited at our squalid apartment. The 
poor house in which we lodged had no concierge whom I could 
question ; but the ground-floor was occupied by a small tobac- 
conist’s shop, and the woman at the counter told me that for 
some days before my wife’s disappearance she had observed 
her pass the shop-window in going out in the afternoon and 
returning towards the evening. Two terrible conjectures 
beset me; either in her walks she had met some admirer, with 
whom she had fled, or, unable to bear the companionship 
and poverty of a union which she had begun to loathe, she 
had gone forth to drown herself in the Seine. On the third 
day from her flight I received the letter I inclose. Possibly 
the handwriting may serve you as a guide in the mission I 
intrust to you. 

“ Monsieur, — ^You have deceived me vilely — taken ad- 
vantage of my inexperienced youth and friendless position to 
decoy me into an illegal marriage. My only consolation 
under my calamity and disgrace is, that I am at least free 
from a detested bond. You will not see me again — it is idle 
to attempt to. do so. I have obtained refuge with relations 
whom I have been fortunate enough to discover, and tO' 
whom I intrust my fate. And even if you could learn the 
shelter I have sought, and have the audacity to molest me, 
you would but subject yourself to the chastisement you so 
richly deserve. 

‘ Lquise Duval.’ 

“ At the perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrateful letter, the 
love I had felt for this woman — already much shaken by her 


72 


THE PARISIANS. 


wrayward and perverse temper — vanished from my hearts, 
never to return. But, as an honest man, my conscience was 
terribly stung. Gould it be possible that I had unknowingly 
deceived her — that our marriage was not legal ? 

“When I recovered from the stun which was the first 
effect of her letter, I sought the opinion of an avoui in the 
neighborhood, named Sartiges, and, to my dismay, I learned 
that while I, marrying according to the customs of my own 
country, was legally bound to Louise in England, and could 
not marry another, the marriage was in all ways illegal for 
her, — ^being without the consent of her relations while she 
was under age — without the ceremonials of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church, to which, though I never heard any profession 
of religious belief from her or her father, it might fairly be 
presumed that she belonged — and, above all, without the 
form of civil contract which is indispensable to the legal 
marriage of a French subject. 

“The avoue said that the marriage, therefore, in itself was 
null, and that Louise could, without incurring legal penalties 
for bigamy, marry again in France according to the French 
laws ; but that under the circumstances it was probable that 
her next of kin would apply on her behalf to the proper 
court for the formal annulment of the marriage, which 
would be the most effectual mode of saving her from any 
molestation on my part, and remove all possible question 
hereafter as to her single state and absolute right to re-marry. 
I had better remain quiet, and wait for intimation of further 
proceedings. I knew not what else to do, and necessarily 
submitted. 


THE PARISIANS. 


73 


“ From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now 
by vehement resentment against Louise, now by the reproach 
of my own sense of honor, in leaving that honor in so ques- 
tionable a point of view, I was aroused by a letter from the 
distant kinsman by whom hitherto I had been so neglected. 
In the previous year he had lost one of his two children ; the 
other was just dead : no nearer relation now surviving stood 
between me and my chance of inheritance from him. He 
wrote word of his domestic affliction with a manly sorrow 
which touched me, said that his health was failing, and 
begged me, as soon as possible, to come and visit him in 
Scotland. I went, and continued to reside with him till his 
death, some months afterwards. By his will I succeeded to 
his ample fortune on condition of taking his name. 

“ As soon as the affairs connected with this inheritance 
permitted, I returned to Paris, and again saw M. Sartiges. 
I had never heard from Louise, nor from any one connected 
with her, since the letter you have read. No steps had been 
taken to annul the marriage, and sufficient time had elapsed 
to render it improbable that such steps would be taken now. 
But if no such steps were taken, however free from the 
marriage-bond Louise might be, it clearly remained binding 
on myself. 

“At my request, M. Sartiges took the most vigorous 
measures that occurred to him to ascertain where Louise was, 
and what and who was the relation with whom she asserted 
she had found refuge. The police were employed ; advertise- 
ments were issued, concealing names, but sufficiently clear to 
be intelligible to Louise if they came under her eye, and to 
VOL. II.— D 


74 


THE PARISIANS. 


the effect that if any informality in oiir marriage existed, she 
was implored for her own sake to remove it by a second cere- 
monial — answer to be addressed to the avou6. No answer 
came ; the police had hitherto failed of discovering her, but 
were sanguine of success, when a few weeks after these 
advertisements a packet reached M. Sartiges, inclosing the 
certificates, annexed to this letter, of the death of Louise 
Duval at Munich. The certificates, as you will see, are to 
appearance officially attested and unquestionably genuine. ■ So' 
they were considered by M. Sartiges as well as by myself. 
Here, then, all inquiry ceased — -the police were dismissed. I 
was free. Dy little and little I overcame the painful im- 
pressions which my ill-starred union and the announcement 
of Louise’s early death bequeathed. Rich, and of active 
mind, I learned to dismiss the trials of my youth as a gloomy 
dream. I entered into public life ; I made myself a credit- 
able position ; became acquainted with your aunt ; we were 
wedded, and the beauty of her nature embellished mine. 
Alas, alas ! two years after our marriage — ^nearly five years 
after I had received the certificates of Louise’s death — I and 
your aunt made a summer excursion into the country of the 
Rhine; on our return we rested at Aix-la-Chapelle. One 
day while there I was walking alone in the environs of the 
town, when, on the road, a little girl, seemingly about five 
years old, in chase of a butterfly, stumbled and fell just be- 
fore my feet ; I took her up, and, as she was crying more from 
the shock of the fall than any actual hurt, I was still trying 
my best to comfort her, when a lady some paces behind her 
came up, and in taking the child from my arms, as I was 


THE PARISIANS. 


75 


bending over her, thanked me in a voice that made my heart 
stand still ; I looked up, and beheld Louise. 

“ It was not till I had convulsively clasped her hand and 
uttered her name that she recognized me. I was, no doubt, 
the more altered of the two — prosperity and happiness had 
left little trace of the needy, careworn, threadbare student. 
But if she were the last to recognize, she was the first to 
recover self-possession. The expression of her face became 
hard and set. I cannot pretend to repeat with any verbal 
accuracy the brief converse that took place between us, as 
she placed the child on the grass bank beside the path, bade 
her stay there quietly, and walked on with me some paces, as 
if she did not wish the child to hear what was said. 

“ The purport of what passed was to this efiect : She re- 
fused to explain the certificates of her death, further than that, 
becoming aware of what she called the ‘ persecution’ of the 
advertisements issued and inquiries instituted, she had caused 
those documents to be sent to the address given in the adver- 
tisement, in order to terminate all further molestation. But 
how they could have been obtained, or by what art so in- 
geniously forged as to deceive the acuteness of a practiced 
lawyer, I know not to this day. She declared, indeed, that 
she was now happy, in easy circumstances, and that if I 
wished to make some reparation for the wrong I had done 
her, it would be to leave her in peace ; and in case — which 
was not likely — we ever met again, to regard and treat her 
as a stranger ; that she, on her part, never would molest me, 
and that the certified death of Louise Duval left me as free 
to marry again as she considered herself to be. 


76 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ My mind was so confused, so bewildered, while she thus 
talked, that I did not attempt to interrupt her. The blow 
had so crushed me that I scarcely struggled under it ; only, 
as she turned to leave me, I suddenly recollected that the 
child, when taken from my arms, had called her ‘ Mamany 
and, judging by the apparent age of the child, it must have 
been born but a few months after Louise had left me— that 
it must be mine. And so, in my dreary woe, I faltered out, 
‘ But what of your infant ? Surely that has on me a claim 
that you relinquish for yourself. You were not unfaithful to 
me while you deemed you were my wife V 

“‘Heavens! can you insult me by such a doubt? No!’ 
she cried out, impulsively and haughtily. ‘ But, as I was not 
legally your wife, the child is not legally yours ; it is mine, 
and only mine. Nevertheless, if you wish to claim it,’ — here 
she paused, as in doubt. I saw at once that she was prepared 
to resign to me the child if I had urged her to do so. I 
must own, with a pang of remorse, that I recoiled from such 
a proposal. What could I do with the child ? How explain 
to my wife the cause of my interest in it ? If only a natural 
child of mine, I should have shrunk from owning to Janet a 
youthful error. But, as it was, — ^the child by a former mar-; 
riage — the former wife still living 1— my blood ran cold with 
dread. And if I did take the child — invent what story I 
might as to its parentage, should I not expose myself, expose 
Janet, to terrible constant danger? The mother’s natural 
affection might urge her at any time to seek tidings of the 
child, and in so doing she might easily discover my new name, 
and, perhaps years hence, establish on me her own claim. j 


THE PARISIANS. 


77 


“ No, I could not risk such perils. I replied, sullenly, 
‘ You say rightly ; the child is yours — only yours.’ I was 
about to add an offer of pecuniary provision for it, but Louise 
had already turned scornfully towards the bank on which she 
had left the infant. I saw her snatch from the child’s hand 
some wild-flowers the poor thing had been gathering; and 
how often have I thought of the rude way in which she did 
it! — not as a mother who loves her child. Just then other 
passengers appeared on the road — two of them I knew — an 
English couple very intimate with Lady Janet and myself. 
They stopped to accost me, while Louise passed by with the 
infant towards the town. I turned in the opposite direction, 
and strove to collect my thoughts. Terrible as was the dis- 
covery thus suddenly made, it was evident that Louise had as 
strong an interest as myself to conceal it. There was little 
chance that it would ever be divulged. Her dress and that 
of the child were those of persons in the richer classes of life. 
After all, doubtless, the child needed not pecuniary assistance 
from me, and was surely best off under the mother’s care. 
Thus I sought to comfort and to delude myself. 

“ The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and re- 
turned to England. But it was impossible for me to banish 
the dreadful thought that Janet was not legally my wife ; 
that could she even guess the secret lodged in my breast she 
would be lost to me forever, even though she died of the 
separation (you know well how tenderly she loved me). My 
nature underwent a silent revolution. I had previously cher- 
ished the ambition common to most men in public life — the 
ambition for fame, for place, for power. That ambition left 


78 


THE PARISIANS. 


me ; I shrank from the thought of becoming too well known, 
lest Louise or her connections, as yet ignorant of my new 
name, might more easily learn what the world knew — viz., 
that I had previously borne another name — the name of her 
husband — and, finding me wealthy and honored, might here- 
after be tempted to claim for herself or her daughter the ties 
she abjured for both while she deemed me poor and despised. 
But partly my conscience, partly the influence of the angel 
by my side, compelled me to seek whatever means of doing 
good to others position and circumstances placed at my dis- 
posal. I was alarmed when even such quiet exercise of mind 
and fortune acquired a sort of celebrity. How painfully I 
shrank from it 1 The world attributed my dread of publicity 
to unaffected modesty. The world praised me, and I knew 
myself an impostor. But the years stole on. I heard no 
more of Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided. 
Yet I was consoled when the two children borne to me by 
Janet died in their infancy. Had they lived, who can tell 
whether something might not have transpired to prove them 
illegitimate ? 

“ I must hasten on. At last came the great and crushing 
calamity of my life : I lost the woman who was my all in all. 
At least she was spared the discovery that would have de- 
prived me of the right of tending her death-bed and leaving 
within her tomb a place vacant for myself. 

“ But after the first agonies that followed her loss, the con- 
science I had so long sought to tranquilize became terribly 
reproachful. Louise had forfeited all right to my considera- 
tion, but my guiltless child had not done so. Did it live 


THE PARISIANS. 


79 


still ? If so, was it not the heir to my fortunes — the only 
child left to me ? True, I have the absolute right to dispose 
of my wealth : it is not in land ; it is not entailed ; but was 
not the daughter I had forsaken morally the first claimant ? 
was no reparation due to her ? You remember that my phy- 
sician ordered me, some little time after your aunt’s death, to 
seek a temporary change of scene. I obeyed, and went away 
no one knew whither. Well, I repaired to Paris. There I 
sought M. Sartiges, the avoui. I found he had been long 
dead. I discovered his executors, and inquired if any papers 
or correspondence between Richard Macdonald and himself 
many years ago were in existence. All such documents, with 
others not returned to correspondents at his decease, had been 
burned by his "^desire. No possible clue to the whereabouts 
of Louise, should any have been gained since I last saw her, 
was left. What then to do I knew not. I did not dare to 
make inquiries through strangers, which, if discovering my 
child, might also bring to light a marriage that would have 
dishonored the memory of my lost saint. I returned to Eng- 
land feeling that my days were numbered. It is to you that 
I transmit the task of those researches which I could not in- 
stitute. I bequeath to you, with the exception of trifling 
legacies and donations to public charities, the whole of my 
fortune. But you will understand by this letter that it is to 
be held on a trust which I cannot specify in my will. I 
could not, without dishonoring the venerated name of your 
aunt, indicate as the heiress of my wealth a child by a wife 
living at the time I married Janet. I cannot form any words 
for such a devise which would not arouse gossip and suspicion 


80 


THE PARISIANS. 


and furnish ultimately a clue to the discovery I would shun. 
I calculate that, after all deductions, the sum that will devolve 
to you will be about £220,000. That which I mean to be 
absolutely and at once yours is the comparatively trifling 
legacy of £20,000. If Louise’s child be not living, or if 
you And full reason to suppose that, despite appearances, the 
child is not mine, the whole of my fortune lapses to you ; but 
should Louise be surviving and need pecuniary aid, you will 
contrive that she may have such an annuity as you may deem 
fitting, without learning whence it comes. You perceive that 
it is j'our object if possible, even more than mine, to preserve 
free from slur the name and memory of her who was to you 
a second mother. All ends we desire would be accomplished 
could you, on discovering my lost child, feel that, without 
constraining your inclinations, you could make her your wife. 
She would then naturally share with you my fortune, and all 
claims of justice and duty would be quietly appeased. She 
would now be of age suitable to yours. When I saw her at 
Aix she gave promise of inheriting no small share of her 
mother’s beauty. If Louise’s assurance of her easy circum- 
stances were true, her daughter has possibly been educated 
and reared with tenderness and care. You have already as- 
sured me that you have no prior attachment. But if, on dis- 
covering this child, you find her already married, or one whom 
you could not love nor esteem, I leave it implicitly to your 
honor and judgment to determine what share of the £200,000 
left in your hands should be consigned to her. She may have 
been corrupted by her mother’s principles. She may — Heaven 
forbid ! — have fallen into evil courses, and wealth would be 


THE PARISIANS. 


81 


misspent in her hands. In that case a competence snfl&cing 
to save her from further degradation, from the temptations of 
poverty, would be all that I desire you to devote from my 
wealth. On the contrary, you may find in her one who, in 
all respects, ought to be my chief inheritor. All this I leave 
in full confidence to you, as being, of all the men I know, the 
one who unites the highest sense of honor with the largest 
share of practical sense and knowledge of life. The main 
difficulty, whatever this lost girl may derive from my sub- 
stance, will be in devising some means to convey it to her so 
that neither she nor those around her may trace the bequest 
to me. She can never be acknowledged as my child — never ! 
Your reverence for the beloved dead forbids that. This diffi- 
culty your clear strong sense must overcome : mine is blinded 
by the shades of death. You too will deliberately consider 
how to institute the inquiries after mother and child so as not 
to betray our secret. This will require great caution. You 
will probably commence at Paris, through the agency of the 
police, to whom you will be very guarded in your communi- 
cations. It is most unfortunate that I have no miniature of 
Louise, and that any description of her must be so vague that 
it may not serve to discover her ; but, such as it is, it may pre- 
vent your mistaking for her some other of her name. Lqpise 
was above the common height, and looked taller than she was, 
with the peculiar combination of very dark hair, very fair 
complexion, and light gray eyes. She would now be somewhat 
under the age of forty. She was not without accomplish- 
ments, derived from the companionship with her father. She 
spoke English fluently; she drew with taste, and even with 
VOL. II.— D* 6 


82 


THE PARISIANS. 


talent. You will see the prudence of confining research at 
first to Louise, rather than to the child who is the principal 
object of it ; for it is not till you can ascertain what has be- 
come of her that you can trust the accuracy of any informa- 
tion respecting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps after all 
erroneously, to be mine. Though Louise talked with such 
le7ity of holding herself free to marry, the birth of her child 
might be sufficient injury to her reputation to become a serious 
obstacle to such second nuptials, not having taken formal steps 
to annul her marriage with myself. If not thus remarried, 
there would be no reason why she should not resume her 
maiden name of Duval, as she did in the signature of her 
letter to me, finding that I had ceased to molest her by the 
inquiries to elude which she had invented the false statement 
of her death. It seems probable, therefore, that she is residing 
somewhere in Paris, and in the name of Duval. Of course 
the burden of uncertainty as to your future cannot be left to 
oppress you for an indefinite length of time. If at the end. 
say, of two years, your researches have wholly failed, consider 
three-fourths of my whole fortune to have passed to you, and 
put by the fourth to accumulate, should the child afterwards 
be discovered and satisfy your judgment as to her claims on 
me gs her father. Should she not, it will be a reserve-fund 
for your own children. But oh, if my child could be found 
in time ! and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, and 
be the wife you would select from free choice ! I can say no 
more. Pity me, and judge leniently of Janet’s husband. 

“ K. K.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


83 


The key to Graham’s conduct is now given; — the deep sor- 
row that took him to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and 
whose honored memory was subjected to so great a risk ; the 
slightness of change in his expenditure and mode of life, after 
an inheritance supposed to be so ample; the abnegation of 
his political ambition ; the subject of his inquiries, and the 
cautious reserve imposed upon them ; above all, the position 
towards Isaura in which he was so cruelly placed. 

Certainly, his first thought in revolving the conditions of 
his trust had been that of marriage with this lost child of 
Richard King’s, should she be discovered single, disengaged, 
and not repulsive to his inclinations. Tacitly he subscribed 
to the reasons for this course alleged by the deceased. It was 
the simplest and readiest plan of uniting justice to the right- 
ful inheritor with care for a secret so important to the honor 
of his aunt, of Richard King himself — his benefactor, — of 
the illustrious house from which Lady Janet had sprung. 
Perhaps, too, the consideration that by this course a fortune 
so useful to his career was secured was not without influence 
on the mind of a man naturally ambitious. But on that con- 
sideration he forbade himself to dwell. He put it away 
from him as a sin. Yet, to marriage with any one else, until 
his mission was fulfilled and the uncertainty as to the extent 
of his fortune was dispelled, there interposed grave practical 
obstacles. How could he honestly present himself to a girl 
and to her parents in the light of a rich man, when in reality 
he might be but a poor man? how could he refer to any 
lawyer the conditions which rendered impossible any settle- 
ment that touched a shilling of the large sum which at any 


84 


THE PARISIANS. 


day lie niiglit have to transfer to another? Still, when once 
fully conscious how deep was the love with which Isaura had 
inspired him, the idea of wedlock with the daughter of Kich- 
ard King, if she yet lived and was single, became inadmissible. 
The orphan condition of the young Italian smoothed away 
the obstacles to proposals of marriage which would have embar- 
rassed his addresses to girls of his own rank and with parents 
who would have demanded settlements. And if he had found 
Isaura alone on that day on which he had seen her last, he 
would doubtless have yielded to the voice of his heart, avowed 
his love, wooed her own, and committed both to the tie of 
betrothal. We have seen how rudely such yearnings of heart 
were repelled on that last interview. His English prejudices 
were so deeply rooted, that, even if he had been wholly free 
from the trust bequeathed to him, he would have recoiled from 
marriage with a girl who, in the ardor for notoriety, could 
link herself with such associates as Gustave Kameau, by habits 
a Bohemian and by principles a Socialist. 

In flying from Paris, he embraced the resolve to banish all 
thought of wedding Isaura and to devote himself sternly to 
the task which had so sacred a claim upon him. Not that 
he could endure the idea of marrying another, even if the 
lost heiress should be all that his heart could have worshiped, 
had that heart been his own to give ; but he was impatient of 
the burden heaped on him, — of the fortune which might not 
be his, of the uncertainty which paralyzed all his ambitious 
schemes for the future. 

Yet, strive as he would — and no man could strive more 
resolutely-— he could not succeed in banishing the image of 


THE PARISIANS. 


85 


Isaiira. It was with him always ; and with it a sense of 
irreparable loss, of a terrible void, of a pining anguish. 

And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while 
sufficient to detain him in the place, was so slight, and ad- 
vanced by such slow degrees, that it furnished no continued 
occupation to his restless mind. M. Renard was acute and 
painstaking. But it was no easy matter to obtain any trace 
of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago. 
The name Duval, too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have 
seen at Paris, time was wasted in the cha^ of a Duval who 
proved not to be the lost Louise. At last M. Benard chanced 
on a house in which, in the year 1849, two ladies from Paris 
had lodged for three weeks. One was named Madame Duval, 
the other Madame Marigny. They were both young, both 
very handsome, and much of the same height and coloring. 
But Madame Marigny was the handsomer of the two. 
Madame Diival frequented the gaming-tables, and was appar- 
ently of very lively temper. Madame Marigny lived very 
quietly, rarely or never stirred out, and seemed in delicate 
health. She, however, quitted the apartment somewhat ab- 
ruptly, and, to the best of the lodging-house-keeper’s recollec- 
tion, took rooms in the country near Aix-^she could not 
remember where. About two months after the departure of 
Madame Marigny, Madame Duval also left Aix, and in com- 
pany with a French gentleman who had visited her much of 
late — a handsome man of striking appearance. The lodging- 
house-keeper did not know what or who he was. She remem- 
bered that he used to be announced to Madame Duval by the 
name of M. Achille. Madame Duval had never been seen 


86 


THE PARISIANS. 


again by the lodging-house-keeper after she had left. But 
Madame Marigny she had once seen, nearly five years after 
she had quitted the lodgings — seen her by chance at the 
railway-station, recognized her at once, and accosted her, 
offering her the old apartment. Madame Marigny had, how- 
ever, briefly replied that she was only at Aix for a few hours, 
and should quit it the same day. 

The inquiry now turned towards Madame Marigny. The 
date in which the lodging-house-keeper had last seen her 
coincided with rtie year in which Richard King had met 
Louise. Possibly, therefore, she might have accompanied 
the latter to Aix at that time, and could, if found, give in- 
formation as to her subsequent history and present where- 
abouts. 

After a tedious search throughout all the environs of Aix, 
Graham himself came, by the merest accident, upon the ves- 
tiges of Louise’s friend. He had been wandering alone in 
the country round Aix, when a violent thunderstorm drove 
him to ask shelter in the house of a small farmer, situated in 
a field, a little off the byway which he had taken. While 
waiting for the cessation of the storm, and drying his clothes 
by the fire in a room that adjoined the kitchen, he entered 
into conversation with the farmer’s wife, a pleasant, well- 
mannered person, and made some complimentary observation 
on a small sketch of the house in water-colors that hung 
upon the wall. 

“ Ah,” said the farmer’s wife, “that was done by a French 
lady who lodged here many years ago. She drew very pret- 
tily, poor thing.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


87 


“ A lady wBo lodged here many years ago — how many ?” 

“ Well, I guess somewhere about twenty.” 

“ Ah, indeed ! Was it a Madame Marigny ?” 

“ Bon Dieu ! That was indeed her name. Did you know 
her ? I should be so glad to hear she is well and — I hope — 
happy.” 

“I do not know where she is now, and am making in- 
quiries to ascertain. Pray help me. How long did Madame 
Marigny lodge with you?” 

“ I think pretty well two months ; yes, two months. She 
left a month after her confinement.” 

“ She was confined here ?” 

“ Yes. When she first came, I had no idea that she was 
enceinte. She had a pretty figure, and no one would have 
guessed it, in the way she wore her shawl. Indeed, I only 
began to suspect it a few days before it happened ; and that 
was so suddenly that all was happily over before we could 
send for the accoucheur. 

“ And the child ? — A girl or a boy ?” 

“ A girl — -the prettiest baby.” 

“ Did she take the child with her when she went?” 

“ No ; it was put out to nurse with a niece of my husband’s 
who was confined about the same time. Madame paid liber- 
ally in advance, and continued to send money half-yearly, till 
she came herself and took away the little girl.” 

“ When was that ? a little less than five years after she 
had left it?” 

“ Why, you know all about it. Monsieur ; yes, not quite 
five years after. She did not come to see me, which I thought 


THE PARISIANS. 


S8 

unkind, but she sent me, through my niece-in-law, a real gold 
watch and a shawl. Poor dear lady — for lady she was all 
over, — with proud ways, and would not bear to be questioned. 
But I am sure she was none of your French light ones, but 
an honest wife like myself, though she never said so.” 

“ And have you no idea where she was all the five years 
she was away, or where she went after reclaiming her child?” 

“No, indeed. Monsieur.” 

“ But her remittances for the infant must have been made 
by letters, and the letters would have had post-marks?” 

“ Well, I daresay: I am no scholar myself. But suppose 
you see Marie Hubert, that is my niece-in-law: perhaps she 
has kept the envelopes.” 

“ Where does Madame Hubert live ?” 

“ It is just a league off by the short path ; you can’t miss 
the way. Her husband has a bit of land of his own, but he 
is also a carrier — ‘ Max Hubert, Carrief,’ written over the 
door, just opposite the first church you get to. The rain has 
ceased, but it may be too far for you to-day.” 

“ Not a bit of it. Many thanks.” 

“ But if you find out the dear lady and see her, do tell 
her how pleased I should be to hear good news of her and 
the little one.” 

Graham strode on under the clearing skies to the house 
indicated. He found Madame Hubert at home, and ready to 
answer all questions ; but, alas I she had not the envelopes. 
Madame Marigny, on removing the child, had asked for all 
the envelopes or letters, and carried them away with her. 
Madame Hubert, who was as little of a scholar as her aunt- 


THE PARISIANS. 


89 


in-law was, had never paid much attention to the post-marks 
on the envelopes ; and the only one that she did remember 
was the first, that contained a bank-note, and that post-mark 
was “ Vienna.” 

“ But did not Madame Marigny’s letters ever give you an 
address to which to write with news of her child?” 

“ I don’t think she cared much for her child. Monsieur. 
She kissed it very coldly when she came to take it away. I 
told the poor infant that that was her own mamma; and 
Madame said, ‘ Yes, you may call me maman,’ in a tone of 
voice — well, not at all like that of a mother. She brought 
with her a little bag which contained some fine clothes for 
the child, and was very impatient till the child had got 
them on.” 

“ Are you quite sure it was the same lady who left the 
child?” 

“ Oh, there is no doubt of that. She was certainly trls^ 
helle^ but I did not fapcy her as aunt did. She carried her 
head very high, and looked rather scornful. However, I 
must say she behaved very generously.” 

“Still, you have not answered my question whether her 
letters contained no address.” 

“ She never wrote more than two letters. One inclosing 
the first remittance was but a few lines, saying that if the 
child was well and thriving I need not write, but if it died 
or became dangerously ill I might at any time write a line to 
Madame M , Poste Restante^ Vienna. She was travel- 

ing about, but the letter would be sure to reach her sooner 
or later. The only other letter I had was to apprise me that 


90 


THE PARISIANS. 


she was coming to remove the child, and might be expected 
in three days after the receipt of her letter.” 

“ And all the other communications from her were merely 
remittances in blank envelopes ?” 

“ Exactly so.” 

Graham, finding he could learn no more, took his depart- 
ure. On his way home, meditating the new idea that his 
adventure that day suggested, he resolved to proceed at once, 
accompanied by M. Benard, to Munich, and there learn what 
particulars could be yet ascertained respecting those certifi- 
cates of the death of Louise Duval, to which (sharing Bich- 
ard King’s very natural belief that they had been skillfully 
forged) he had hitherto attached no importance. 


CHAPTEB VII. 

No satisfactory result attended the inquiries made at 
Munich, save indeed this certainty — the certificates attesting 
the decease of some person calling herself Louise Duval had 
not been forged. They were indubitably genuine. A lady 
bearing that name had arrived at one of the principal hotels 
late in the evening, and had there taken handsome rooms. 
She was attended by no servant, but accompanied by a gen- 
tleman, who, however, left the hotel as soon as he had seen 
her lodged to her satisfaction. The books of the hotel still 
retained the entry of her name — Madame Duval, Frmigaise 


THE PARISIANS. 


91 


rentih'e. On comparing the handwriting of this entry with 
the letter from Richard King’s first wife, Graham found it to 
differ ; but then it was not certain, though probable, that the 
entry had been written by the alleged Madame Duval herself. 
She was visited the next day by the same gentleman who 
had accompanied her on arriving. He dined and spent the 
evening with her. But no one at the hotel could remember 
what was the gentleman’s name, nor even if he were an- 
nounced by any name. He never called again. Two days 
afterwards, Madame Duval was taken ill ; a doctor was sent 
for, and attended her till her death. This doctor was easily 
found. He remembered the case perfectly — congestion of the 
lungs, apparently caused by cold caught on her journey. 
Fatal symptoms rapidly manifested themselves, and she died 
on the third day from the seizure. She was a young and 
handsome woman. He had asked her during her short ill- 
ness if he should not write to her friends — if there were no 
one she would wish to be sent for. She replied that there 
was only one friend, to whom she had already written, and 
who would arrive in a day or two. And, on inquiring, it 
appeared that she had written such a letter, and taken it her- 
self to the post on the morning of the day she was taken ill. 

She had in her purse not a large sum, but money enough 
to cover all her expenses, including those of her funeral, which, 
according to the law in force at the place, followed very quickly 
on her decease. The arrival of the friend to whom she had 
written being expected, her effects were, in the mean while, 
sealed up. The day after her death a letter arrived for her, 
which was opened. It was evidently written by a man, and 


92 


THE PARISIANS. 


apparently by a lover. It expressed an impassioned reject that 
the writer was unavoidably prevented returning to Munich so 
soon as he had hoped, but trusted to see his dear houton de 
rom in the course of the following week ; it was only signed 
Achille, and gave no address. Two or three days after, a lady, 
also young and handsome, arrived at the hotel, and inquired 
for Madame Duval. She was greatly shocked at hearing of 
her decease. When sufficiently recovered to bear being ques- 
tioned as to Madame Duval’s relations and position, she ap- 
peared confused ; said, after much pressing, that she was no 
relation to the deceased ; that she believed JMadame Duval had 
no relations with whom she was on friendly terms, at least 
she had never heard her speak of any ; and that her own ac- 
quaintance with the deceased, though cordial, was very recent. 
She could or would not give any clue to the writer of the 
letter signed Achille, and she herself quitted Munich that 
evening, leaving the impression that Madame Duval had been 
one of those ladies who, in adopting a course of life at variance 
with conventional regulations, are repudiated by their relations, 
and probably drop even their rightful names. 

Achille never appeared ; but a few days after, a lawyer at 
Munich received a letter from another at Vienna, requesting, in 
compliance with a client’s instructions, the formal certificates 
of Louise Duval’s death. These were sent as directed, and no- 
thing more about the ill-fated woman was heard of. After the 
expiration of the time required by law, the seals were removed 
from the effects, which consisted of two malles and a dressin^- 
case. But they only contained the articles appertaining to a 
lady’s wardrobe or toilet. No letters — not even another note 


THE PARISIANS. 


93 


from Achille — no clue, in short, to the family or antecedents 
of the deceased. What then had become of these effects, no 
one at the hotel could give a clear or satisfactory account. It 
was said by the mistress of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they 
had, she supposed, been sold by her predecessor, and by order 
of the authorities, for the benefit of the poor. 

If the lady who had represented herself as Louise Duval’s 
acquaintance had given' her own name, which doubtless she 
did, no one recollected it. It was not entered in the books 
of the hotel, for she had not lodged there ; nor did it appear 
that she had allowed time for formal examination by the civil 
authorities. In fact, it was clear that poor Louise Duval had 
been considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper and the 
medical attendant at Munich ; and her death had excited so 
little interest, that it was strange that even so many particulars 
respecting it could be gleaned. 

After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, Graham and 
M. Renard repaired to Vienna ; there, at least, Madame Ma- 
rigny had given an address, and there she might be heard of. 

At Vienna, however, no research availed to discover a trace 
of any such person, and in despair Graham returned to England 
in the January of 1870, and left the further prosecution of 
his inquiries to M. Renard, who, though obliged to transfer 
himself to Paris for a time, promised that he would leave no 
stone unturned for the discovery of Madame Marigny ; and 
Graham trusted to that assurance when M. Renard, rejecting 
half of the large gratuity offered him, added, “J’e sms 
Frangais ; this with me has ceased to be an affair of money ; 
ii has become an affair that involves my dmour^opre." 


94 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTER VIIL 

If Graliam Vane had been before caressed and courted foi 
himself, he was more than ever appreciated by polite society, 
now that he added the positive repute of wealth to that of a 
promising intellect. Fine ladies said that Graham Vane was 
a match for any girl. Eminent politicians listened to him 
with a more attentive respect, and invited him to selector 
dinner-parties. His cousin the Duke urged him to announce 
his candidature for the county, and purchase back, at least, 
the old Stamm-schloss. But Graham obstinately refused tu 
entertain either proposal, continued to live as economically as 
before in his old apartments, and bore with an astonishing 
meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of fashion heaped 
upon his shoulders. At heart he was restless and unhappy. 
The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King haunted his 
thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was his whole 
life to be passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture 
which in itself was gall and wormwood to a nature constitu- 
tionally frank and open? Was he forever to appear a rich 
man and live as a poor one? Was he till his death-bed to be 
deemed a sordid miser whenever he refused a just claim on 
his supposed wealth, and to feel his ambition excluded from 
the objects it earnestly coveted, and which he was forced to 
appear too much of an Epicurean philosopher to prize ? 

More torturing than all else to the man’s innermost heart 


THE PARISIANS, 


95 


was the consciousness that he had not conquered, could not 
conquer, the yearning love with which Isaura had inspired 
him, and yet that against such love all his reasonings, all his 
prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were combined, lu 
the French newspapers which he had glanced over while 
engaged in his researches in Germany — nay, in German 
critical journals themselves— he had seen so many notices 
of the young author — highly eulogistic, 'it is true, but which 
to his peculiar notions were more offensive than if they had 
been sufficiently condemnatory of her work to discourage her 
from its repetition, — notices which seemed to him the su- 
preme impertinences which no man likes exhibited toward^ 
the woman he would render the chivalrous homage of re- 
spect. Evidently this girl had become as much public prop- 
erty- as if she had gone on the stage. Minute details of her 
personal appearance — of -the dimples on her cheeks— of the 
whiteness of her arms — of her peculiar way of dressing her 
hair — anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, 
but how could Graham know that ?) — of the reasons why she 
had adopted the profession of author instead of that of 
singer — of the sensation she had created in certain salons (to 
Graham, who knew Paris so well, salons in which he would 
not have liked his wife to appear) — of the compliments paid 
to her by grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons with ballet- 
dancers, or by authors whose genius soared far beyond the 
flammantia mocnia of a world confined by respect for one’s 
neighbors’ landmarks, — all this, which belongs to ground of 
personal gossip untouched by English critics of female writers 
—ground especially favored by Continental and, I am grieved 


96 


THE PARISIANS. 


to say, by American journalists, — all this was to the sensitive 
Englishman much what the minute inventory of Egeria’s 
charms would have been to Numa Pompilius. The Nymph, 
hallowed to him by secret devotion, was vulgarized by the 
noisy hands of the mob, and by the popular voices, which 
said, “ We know more about Egeria than you do.” And 
when he returned to England, and met with old friends 
familiar to Parisian life, who said, “ Of course you have read 
the Cicogna’s roman. What do you think of it? Very fine 
writing, I daresay, but above me. I go in for ‘ Les Mysteres 
de Paris’ or ‘ Monte Christo.’ But I even find Oeorges Sand 
a bore,” — then as a critic Graham Vane fired up, extolled 
the roman he would have given his ears for Isaura never to 
have written; but retired from the contest, muttering only, 
How can I — I, Graham Vane — ^how can I be such an idiot 
— ^how can I in every hour of the twenty-four sigh to myself, 
* What are other women to me ? — ^Isaura, Isaura 1’ ” 


BOOK 


CHAP-TER L 

It is the first week in the month of May, 1870. Celebri- 
ties are of rapid growth in the salons of Paris. Gustave 
Rameau has gained the position for which he sighed. The 
journal he edits has increased its hold on the public, and his 
share of the profits has been liberally augmented by the secret 
proprietor. Rameau is acknowledged as a power in literary 
circles. And as critics belonging to the same clique praise 
each other in Paris, whatever they may do in communities 
more rigidly virtuous, his. poetry has been declared by authori- 
ties in the press to be superior to that of Alfred de Musset 
in vigor, — to that of Victor Hugo in refinement ; neither of 
which assertions would much, perhaps, shock a cultivated 
understanding. 

It is true that it (Gustave’s poetry) has not gained a wide 
audience among the public. But with regard to poetry now- 
adays, there are plenty of persons who say, as Dr. Johnson 
said of the verse of Spratt, “ I would rather praise it than 
read.” 

Au all events, Rameau was courted in gay and brilliant 
circles, and, following the general example of French littera- 
teurs in fashion, lived well up to the income he received, had 
a delightful bachelor’s apartment, furnished with artistic 
VoL. II.— E 7 97 


98 


THE PARISIANS. 


effect, spent largely on tlie adornment of liis person, kept a 
coupe^ and entertained profusely at the Cafe Anglais and the 
Maison Dor4e. A reputation that inspired a graver and more 
unquiet interest had been created by the Vicomte de Maul4on. 
Recent articles in the Sens Communj^^ written under the 
name of Pierre Firmin, on the discussions on the vexed ques- 
tion of the plebiscite, had given umbrage to the government, 
and Rameau had received an intimation that he, as editor, 
was responsible for the compositions of the contributors to the 
journal he edited ; and that though, so long as Pierre Firmin 
had kept his caustic spirit within proper bounds, the govern- 
ment had winked at the evasion of the law which required 
every political article in a journal to be signed by the real 
name of its author, it could do so no longer. Pierre Firmin 
was apparently a nom de plume ; if not, his identity must be 
proved, or Rameau would pay the penalty which his con- 
tributor seemed bent on incurring. 

Rameau, much alarmed for the journal that might be sus- 
pended, and for himself who might be imprisoned, conveyed 
this information through the publisher to his correspondent 
Pierre Firmin, and received the next day an article signed 
Victor de Maul^on, in which the writer proclaimed himself 
to be one and the same with Pierre Firmin, and, taking a yel 
bolder tone than he had before assumed, dared the govern- 
ment to attempt legal measures against him. The government 
was prudent enough to disregard that haughty bravado, but 
Victor de Maul^on rose at once into political importance. He 
had already, in his real name and his quiet way, established a 
popular and respectable place in Parisian society. But if this 


THE PARISIANS. 


99 


revelation created him enemies whom he had not before pro- 
voked, he was now sufficiently acquitted, by tacit consent, of 
the sins formerly laid to his charge, to disdain the assaults of 
party wrath. His old reputation for personal courage and 
skill in sword and pistol served, indeed, to protect him from 
such charges as a Parisian journalist does not reply to with 
his pen. If he created some enemies, he created many more 
friends, or, at least, partisans and admirers. He only needed 
fine and imprisonment to become a popular hero. 

A few days after he had thus proclaimed himself, Victor 
de Maul4on — who had before kept aloof from Rameau, and 
from salons at which he was likely to meet that distinguished 
minstrel — solicited his personal acquaintance, and asked him 
to breakfast. 

Rameau joyfully went. He had a very natural curiosity to 
see the contributor whose -articles had so mainly insured the 
sale of the “ Sem Commune 

In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged 
man, with commanding port and courtly address, he failed to 
recognize any resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, 
be-spectacled, shambling sexagenarian whom he had known 
as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of voice struck 
him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had 
heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did 
not occur to him ; if it had occurred it would only have 
struck him as a chance coincidence. Rameau, like most 
egotists, was rather a duH observer of men. His genius was 
not objective. 

“ I trust. Monsieur Rameau,” said the Vicomte, as he and 


100 


THE PARISIANS. 


his guest were seated at the breakfast-tahle, “ that you are 
not dissatisfied with the remuneration your eminent services 
in the journal have received?” 

“ The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liber- 
ally,” answered Rameau. , 

“I take that compliment to myself, cher confrere; for, 
though the expenses of starting the ‘ Sens CommunJ and the 
caution-money lodged, were found by a friend of mine, that 
was as a loan, which I have long since repaid, and the prop- 
erty in the journal is now exclusively mine. I have to thank 
you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but for 
those of the colleagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin’s 
piquant criticisms were most valuable to us at starting. I 
regret to have lost his aid. But as he has set up a new jour- 
nal of his own, even he has not wit enough to spare for an- 
other. A'proj[)08 of our contributors, I shall ask you to pre- 
sent me to the fair author of ‘ The Artist’s Daughter.’ I am 
of too prosaic a nature to appreciate justly the merits of a. 
roman; but I have heard warm praise of this story from the 
young, — they are the best judges of that kind of literature ; 
and I can at least understand the worth of a contributor who 
trebled the sale of our journal. It is a misfortune to us, in- 
deed, that her work is completed ; but I trust that the sum 
sent to her through our publisher suffices to tempt her to 
favor us with another roman series.” 

“ Mademoiselle Cicogna,” said Rameau, with a somewhat 
sharper intonation of his sharp voice,^‘ has accepted for the re- 
publication of her roman in a separate form terms which attest 
the worth of her genius, and has had offers from other journals 


THE PARISIANS. 


101 


for a serial tale of even higher amount than the sum so genen 
ously sent to her through your publisher.” 

“ Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau ? If so, tant 
pis pbur vous. Pardon me, I mean that your salary suffers in 
proportion as the ‘ Sens Commun declines in sale.” 

She has not accepted them. I advised her not to do so 
until she could compare them with those offered by the pro- 
prietor of the ‘ Sens Commun.' ” 

“ And your advice guides her ? Ah ! cher confrhre^ you are 
a happy man — ^you have influence over this young aspirant to 
the fame of a He Stael or a Gfeorge Sand.” 

“I flatter myself that I have some,” answered Rameau, 
smiling loftily as he helped himself to another tumbler of Vol- 
ney wine — excellent, but rather heady. 

“ So much the better. I leave you free to arrange terms 
with Mademoiselle Cicogna, higher than she can obtain else- 
where, and kindly contrive my own personal introduction to her 
— ^you have breakfasted already ? — permit me to offer you a 
cigar — excuse me if I do not bear you company ; I seldom 
smoke — never of a morning. Now to business, and the state 
of France. Take that easy-chair, seat yourself comfortably. 
So ! Listen ! If ever Mephistopheles revisit the earth, how 
he will laugh at Universal Suffrage and Vote by Ballot in an 
old country like France, as things to be admired by educated 
men and adopted by friends of genuine freedom !” 

“ I don’t understand you,” said Rameau. 

“ In this respect, at least, let me hope that I can furnish you 
with understanding. 

“ The Emperor has resorted to a plebiscite — viz., a vote b;^ 


102 


THE PARISIANS. 


ballot and universal suffrage — as to certain popular changes 
which circumstances compel him to substitute for his former 
personal rule. Is there a single intelligent Liberal who is not 
against that jpUhiscite ? — is there any such who does not know 
that the appeal of the Emperor to universal suffrage and vote 
by ballot must result in a triumph over all the variations of 
free thought, by the unity which belongs to Order, represented 
through an able man at the head of the State ? The multitude 
never comprehend principles ; principles are complex ideas ; 
they comprehend a simple idea, and the simplest idea is, a 
Name that rids their action of all responsibility to thought. 

“ Well, in France there are principles superabundant which 
you can pit against the principle of Imperial rule. But there 
is not one name you can pit against Napoleon the Third ; there- 
fore I steer our little bark in the teeth of the popular gale 
when I denounce the plebiscite^ and ‘ Le Sens Commun' will 
necessarily fall in sale — it is beginning to fall already. We 
shall have the educated men with us, the rest against. In 
every country — even in China, where all are highly educated 
— a few must be yet more highly educated than the many. 
Monsieur Bameau, I desire to overthrow the Empire : in order 
to do that, it is not enough to have on my side the educated 
men, I must have the canaille — the canaille of Paris and of 
the manufacturing towns. But I use the canaille for my pur- 
pose^ — I don’t mean to enthrone it. You comprehend ? — the 
canaille quiescent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream ; 
the canaille agitated is mud at the surface. But no man ca- 
pable of three ideas builds the palffces and senates of civilized 
society out of mud, be it at the top or the bottom of an ocean. 


THE PARISIANS. 


103 


Can either you or I desire that the destinies of France shall 
be swayed by coxcombical artisans who think themselves supe- 
rior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a 
commonwealth is the confiscation of private property?” 

Rameau, thoroughly puzzled by this discourse, bowed his 
head, and replied whisperingly, “ Proceed. You are against 
the Empire, yet against the populace ! — What are you for ? 
not, surely, the Legitimists? — are you Republican? Orleanist? . 
or what ?” 

“ Your questions are very pertinent,” answered the Vicomte, 
courteously, “ and my answer shall be very frank. I am against 
absolute rule, whether under a Bonaparte or a Bourbon. I 
am for a free State, whether under a constitutional hereditary 
sovereign like the English or Belgian, or whether, republican 
in name, it be less democratic than constitutional monarchy in 
practice, like the American. But, as a man interested in the 
fate of ‘ Le Seiis Commun^ I hold in profound disdain all 
crotchets for revolutionizing the elements of Human Nature. 
Enough of this abstract talk. To the point. You are of course 
aware of the violent meetings held by the Socialists, nominally 
against the plebiscite^ really against the Emperor himself?” 

Yes, I know at least that the working-class are extremely 
discontented ; the numerous strikes last month were not on a 
mere question of wages — they were against the existing forms 
of society. And the articles by Pierre Firmin which brought 
me into collision with the government seemed to difier from 
what you now say. They approved those strikes ; they ap- 
peared to sympathize with the revolutionary meetings at 
Belleville and Montmartre.” 


104 


THE PARISIANS, 


“ Of course ! we use coarse tools for destroying ; we cast them 
aside for finer ones when we want to reconstruct. 

“ I attended one of those meetings last night. See, I have 
a pass for all such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot 
even spell the name he assumes — ‘ Pom-de- Tair' A com- 
missary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his 
secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments 
of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more 
wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his 
penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak- 
limbed silhouette of a man, and, affecting a solemnity of mien 
which might have become the virtuous Guizot, moves this 
resolution — ‘ The French people condemns Charles Louis 
Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual hard labor.’ 
Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly, ‘ I 
declare this meeting at an end.’ 

“ Sensation among the audience — they gesticulate — they 
screech — they bellow — the commissary puts on his great-coat 
— the secretary gives a last touch to his nails and pockets his 
penknife — the audience disperses — the silhouette of a man 
effaces itself — all is over.” 

“ You describe the scene most wittily,” said Rameau, 
laughing, but the laugh was constrained. A would-be cynic 
himself there was a something grave and earnest in the real 
cynic that awed him. 

“ What conclusion do you draw from such a scene, chef 
poete asked De Mauleon, fixing his keen quiet eyes oi; 
Rameau. 

“ What conclusion ? Well, that — that ” 


THE PARISIANS. 


105 


‘‘ Yes, continue.” 

“ That the audience were sadly degenerated from the time 
when Mirabeau said to a Master of the Ceremonies, ‘ We are 
here by the power of the French people, and nothing but the 
point of the bayonet shall expel us.’ ” 

“ Spoken like a poet, a French poet. I suppose you ad- 
mire M. Victor Hugo. Conceding that he would have em- 
ployed a more sounding phraseology, comprising more absolute 
ignorance of men, times, and manners in unintelligible meta- 
phor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might have 
been his ; but pardon me if I add, it would not be that of 
Common JSense.^’ 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely,” 
said Rameau, coloring high. 

“ Accept my apologies ; I did not mean to rebuke, but to 
instruct. The times are not those of 1789. And Nature, 
ever repeating herself in the production of coxcombs and 
blockheads, never repeats herself in the production of Mira- 
beaus. The Empire is doomed — doomed, because it is hostile 
to the free play of intellect. Any government that gives ab- 
solute preponderance to the many is hostile to intellect, for 
intellect is necessarily confined to the few. 

“ Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of 
society. It cares not what the materials through which it 
insinuates or forces its way to its seat. 

“ I accept the aid of Pom-de-Tair. I do not demean my- 
self to the extent of writing articles that may favor the princi- 
ples of Pom-dt- Tair^ signed in the name of Victor de Mauleon 
or of Pierre Firmin. 

K* 


106 


THE PARISIANS. 


‘‘ I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart 
writers, who know nothing about Socialists and Internation- 
alists, who therefore will not commit ‘ Le Sens Commun' by 
advocating the doctrines of those idiots, but who will flatter 
the vanity of the canaille — vaguely ; write any stuff they 
please about the renown of Paris, ‘ the eye of the world,’ 
‘ the sun of the European system,’ etc., of the artists of Paris 
as supplying soul to that eye and fuel to that sun — any hlague 
of that sort — genre Victor Hugo ; but nothing definite against 
life and property, nothing that may not be considered here- 
after as the harmless extravagance of a poetic enthusiasm. 
You might write such articles yourself. In fine, I want to 
excite the multitude, and yet not to commit our journal to 
the contempt of the few. 

“ Nothing is to be admitted that may bring the law upon 
us except it be signed by my name. There may be a moment 
in which it would be desirable for somebody to be sent to 
prison : in that case I allow no substitutes — I go myself. 

“ Now you have my most secret thoughts. I intrust them 
to your judgment with entire confidence. Monsieur Lebeau 
gave you a high character, which you have hitherto deserved. 
By the way, have you seen anything lately of that bourgeois 
conspirator ?” 

“ No : his professed business of letter- writer or agent is 
transferred to a clerk, who says M. Lebeau is abroad.” 

“ Ah ! I don’t think that is true. I fancy I saw him the 
other evening gliding along the lanes of Belleville. lie is 
too confirmed a conspirator to be long out of Paris ; no place 
like Paris for seething brains.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


107 


“ Have you known M. Lebeau long?” asked E-ameau. 

“ Ay, many years. We are both Norman by birtb, as you 
may perceive by something broad in our accent.” 

“ Ha ! I knew your voice was familiar to me ; certainly it 
does remind me of Lebeau’s.” 

“ Normans are like each other in many things besides voice 
and accent — obstinacy, for instance, in clinging to ideas once 
formed ; this makes them good friends and steadfast enemies. 
I would advise no man to make an enemy of Lebeau. 

“ Au revoir^ cher confrhre. Do not forget to present me to 
Mademoiselle Cicogna.” 


CHAPTER II. 

On leaving De Mauleon and regaining his cou'pi^ Rameau 
felt at once bewildered and humbled, for he was not prepared 
for the tone of careless superiority which the Vicomte assumed 
over him. He had expected to be much complimented, and 
he comprehended vaguely that he had been somewhat snubbed. 
He was not only irritated — he was bewildered : for De Mau- 
leon’s political disquisitions did not leave any clear or definite 
idea on his mind as to the principles which as editor of the 
‘ Sens GommurU he was to see adequately represented and 
carried out. In truth, Rameau was one of those numerous 
Parisian politicians who have read little and reflected less on 
the government of men and States. Envy is said by a great 


108 


THE PARISIANS. 


Frencli writer to be tbe vice of Democracies. Envy certainlji 
had made Rameau a democrat. He could talk and write 
glibly enough upon the themes of equality and fraternity, and 
was so far an ultra-democrat that he thought moderation the 
sign of a mediocre understanding. 

De Mauleon’s talk, therefore, terribly perplexed him. It 
was unlike anything he had heard before. Its revolutionary 
professions, accompanied with so much scorn for the multi- 
tude, and the things the multitude desired, were G-reek to 
him. He was not shocked by the cynicism which placed 
wisdom in using the passions of mankind as tools for the 
interests of an individual ; but he did not understand the 
frankness of its avowal. 

Nevertheless the man had dominated over and subdued 
him. He recognized the power of his contributor without 
clearly analyzing its nature — a power made up of large expe- 
rience of life, of cold examination of doctrines that heated 
others — of patrician calm — of intellectual, sneer — of collected 
confidence in self. 

Besides, Rameau felt, with a nervous misgiving, that in 
this man, who so boldly proclaimed his contempt for the in- 
struments he used, he had found a master. De Maul4on, 
then, was sole proprietor of the journal from which Rameau 
drew his resources ; might at any time dismiss him ; might at 
any time involve the journal in penalties which, even if Ra- 
meau could escape in his ofiicial capacity as editor, still might 
stop the ‘ Sens Commun^' and with it Rameau’s luxurious 
subsistence. 

Altogether the visit to De Mauleon had been anything but 


THE PARISIANS. 


lOS 

a pleasant one. He sought, as the carriage rolled on, t& turn 
his thoughts to more agreeable subjects, and the image of 
Isaura rose before him. To do him justice, he had learned 
to love this girl as well as his nature would permit : he loved 
her with the whole strength of his imagination, and, though 
his heart was somewhat cold, his imagination was very ardent, 
lie loved her also with the whole strength of his vanity, and 
vanity was even a more preponderant organ of his system than 
imagination. To carry off as his prize one who had already 
achieved celebrity, whose beauty and fascination of manner 
were yet more acknowledged than her genius, would certainly 
be a glorious triumph. 

Every Parisian of Kameau’s stamp looks forward in “Car- 
riage to a brilliant mlon. What mlmi more brilliant than 
that which he and Isaura united could command ? He had 
long conquered his early -impulse of envy at Isaura’s success, 
— in fact, that success had become associated with his own and 
had contributed greatly to his enrichment. So that to other 
motives of love he might add the prudential one of interest. 
Rameau well knew that his own vein of composition, however 
lauded by the cliques, and however unrivaled in his own eyes, 
was not one that brings much profit in the market. He com- 
pared himself to those poets who are too far in advance of 
their time to be quite as sure of bread and cheese as they are 
of immortal fame. 

But he regarded Isaura’s genius as of a lower order, and a 
thing in itself very marketable. Marry her, and the bread 
and cheese were so certain that he might elaborate as slowly 
as he pleased the verses destined to immortal fame. Then he 


110 


THE PARISIANS. 


sliould be independent of inferior creatures like Victor de 
Mauleon! But wliile Rameau convinced himself that he was 
passionately in love with Isaura, he could not satisfy himself 
that she was in love with him. 

Though during the past year they had seen each other con- 
stantly, and their literary occupations had produced many 
sympathies between them — though he had intimated that 
many of his most eloquent love-poems were inspired by her — 
though he had asserted in prose, very pretty prose too, that 
she was all that youthful poets dream of, — yet she had hith- 
erto treated such declarations with a playful laugh, accepting 
them as elegant compliments inspired by Parisian gallantry ; 
and he felt an angry and sore foreboding that if he were to 
insist too seriously on the earnestness of their import and ask 
her plainly to be his wife, her refusal would be certain, and 
his visits to her house might be interdicted. 

Still Isaura was unmarried, still she had refused offers of 
marriage from men higher placed than himself, — still he 
divined no one whom she could prefer. And as he now 
leaned back in his cot/jpd he muttered to himself, “ Oh, if I 
could but get rid of that little demon Julie, I would devote 
myself so completely to winning Isaura’s heart that I must 
succeed! — ^but how to get rid of Julie? She so adores me, 
and is so headstrong ! She is capable of going to Isaura — 
showing my letters — making such a scene !” 

Here he checked the carriage at a cafe on the Boulevard, 
descended, imbibed two glasses of absinthe, and then, feeling 
much emboldened, remounted his cowpi and directed the 
driver to Isaura’s apartment. 


CHAPTER III. 


Yes. celebrities are of rapid growth in the salons of Paris. 
Far more solid than that of Rameau, far more brilliant than 
that of He Mauleon, was the celebrity which Isaura had now 
acquired. She had been unable to retain the pretty suburban 

villa at A . The owner wanted to alter and enlarge it 

for his own residence, and she had been persuaded by Signora 
Yenosta, who was always sighing for fresh salons to conquer, 
to remove (towards the close of the previous year) to apart- 
ments in the centre of the Parisian beau monde. Without 
formally professing to receive, on one evening in the week her 
salon was open to those who had eagerly sought her acquaint- 
ance — comprising many stars in the world of fashion, as well 
as those in the world of art and letters. And, as she had now 
wholly abandoned the idea of the profession for which her 
voice had been cultivated, she no longer shrank from the exer- 
cise of her surpassing gift of song for the delight of private 
friends. Her physician had withdrawn the interdict on such 
exercise. His skill, aided' by the rich vitality of her con- 
stitution, had triumphed over all tendencies to the malady 
for which he had been consulted. ' 

To hear Isaura Cicogna sing in her own house was a privi- 
lege sought and prized by many who never read a word of 
her literaiy compositions. A good critic of a book is rare ; 
but good judges of a voice are numberless. Adding this 

111 


112 


THE PARISIANS. 


attraction of song to tier youth, her beauty, her frank powers 
of converse — an innocent sweetness of manner free from all 
conventional affectation — ^and to the fresh novelty of a genius 
which inspired the young with enthusiasm and beguiled the 
old to indulgence, it was no wonder that Isaura became a 
celebrity at Paris. 

Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was not turned 
by the adulation that surrounded her. But I believe, be it 
said with diffidence, that a woman of mind so superior that 
the mind never pretends to efface the heart, is less intoxicated 
with flattery than a man equally exposed to it. It is the strength 
of her heart that keep sher head sober. 

Isaura had never yet overcome her first romance of love ; as 
yet, amid all her triumphs, there was not a day in which her 
thoughts did not wistfully, mournfully, fly back to those 
blessed moments in which she felt her cheek color before a 
look, her heart beat at the sound of a footfall. Perhaps if 
there had been the customary finish to this young romance — 
the lover’s deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell — the 
girl’s pride would, ere this, have conquered her affection— 
possibly — who knows ? — replaced it. 

But, reader, be you male or female, have you ever known 
this sore trial of affection and pride, that from some cause or 
other, to you mysterious, the dear intercourse to whj/k you 
had accustomed the secret life of your life abruptly ceases , 
you know that a something has come between you and the 
beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot measure, cannot 
guess, and therefore cannot surmount ; and you say to your- 
self at the dead of solitary night, “ Oh for an explanation I 


THE PARISIANS. 


113 


Oh for one meeting more I All might be so easily set right, 
or, if not, I should know the worst, and, knowing it, could 
conquer 1” 

This trial was Isaura’s. There had been no explanation, 
no last farewell, between her and Graham. She divined — no 
woman lightly makes a mistake there — that he loved her. 
She knew that this dread something had intervened between 
her and him when he took leave of her before others so many 
months ago ; that this dread something still continued — what 
was it? She was certain that it would vanish, could they 
but once meet again, and not before others. Oh for such a 
meeting ! 

She could not herself destroy hope." She could not marry 
another. She would have no heart to give to another whik 
he was free, while in doubt if his heart was still her own. 
And thus her pride did not help her to conquer her affection. 

Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He had ceased 
to correspond with Savarin ; but among those who most fre- 
quented her salon were the Morleys. Americans so well 
educated and so well placed as the Morleys knew something 
about every Englishman of the social station of Graham Vane. 
Isaura learned from them that Graham, after a tour on the 
Continent, had returned to England at the commencement 
of the ^ear, had been invited to stand for Parliament, had re- 
fused, that his name was in the list published by the “ Morn- 
ing Post” of the elite whose arrival in London, or whose 
presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event, that the 
“ Athenaeum’ ’ had mentioned a rumor that Graham V ane 
was the author of a political pamphlet which, published 
VoL. II. 8 


114 


THE PARISIANS. 


anoDymously, liad made no inconsiderable sensation. Isaura 
sent to England for tbat pamphlet : the subject was somewhat 
dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was scarcely of 
the eloquence which wins the admiration of women ; and yet 
she learned every word of it by heart. 

We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which 
she hailed as an approach to him was daily making her more 
remote. The sweet labors she undertook for that celebrity 
continued to be sweetened yet more by secret association with 
the absent one. How many of the passages most admired 
could never have been written had he been never known ! 

And she blessed those labors the more that they upheld 
her from the absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled 
her from the gnawing torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She 
did comply with Madame de Grantmesnil’s command — did 
pass from the dusty beaten road of life into green fields and 
along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal by- world. 

But still the one image which reigned over her human 
heart moved beside her in the gardens of fairy-land. 


CHAPTEB IV. 

Isaura was seated in her pretty mlon^ with the Venosta, 
M. Savarin, the Morleys, and the financier Louvier, when 
Rameau was announced. 

“ Ha !” cried Savarin, “ we were just discussing a matter 
which nearly concerns you, chcr poUe. I have not seen you 


THE PARISIANS. 


115 


since the announcement that Pierre Firmin is no other than 
Victor de Maul^on. Ma foi^ that worthy seems likely to be 
as dangerous with his pen as he was once with his sword. 
The article in which he revealed himself makes a sharp lunge 
on the government. Take care of yourself. When hawks 
and nightingales fly together the hawk may escape, and the 
nightingale complain of the barbarity of kings, in a cage: 
‘ flebiliter gemens infelix avis.’ ” 

“ He is not fit to conduct a journal,” replied Rameau, 
magniloquently, “ who will not brave a danger for his body 
in defense of the right to infinity for his thought.” 

“Bravo!” said Mrs. Morley, clapping her pretty hands. 
“ That speech reminds me of home. The French are very 
much like the Americans in their style of oratory.” 

“ So,” said Louvier, “ my old friend the Vicomte has come 
out as a writer, a politician, a philosopher ; I feel hurt that 
he kept this secret from me despite our intimacy. I suppose 
you knew it from the first, M. Rameau?” 

“ No, I was as much taken by surprise as the rest of the 
world. You have long known M. de Mauleon?” 

“ Yes, I may say we began life together — that is, much at 
the same time.” 

“ What is he like in appearance ?” asked Mrs. Morley. 

“ The ladies thought him very handsome when he was 
young,” replied Louvier. “He is still a fine-looking man, 
about my height.” 

“ I should like to know him,” cried Mrs. Morley, “ if only 
to tease that husband of mine ! He refuses me the dearest 
of woman’s rights ; I can’t make him jealous.” 


116 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ You may liave tlie opportunity of knowing tliis ci-devani 
Lovelace very soon,” said E-ameau, “ for lie has begged me to 
present him to Mademoiselle Cicogna, and I will ask her per- 
mission to do so on Thursday evening when she receives.” 

Isaura, who had hitherto attended very listlessly to the 
conversation, bowed assent. “ Any friend of yours will be 
welcome. But I own the articles signed in the name of 
Pierre Firmin do not prepossess me in favor of their 
author.” 

“ Why so ?” asked Louvier ; “ surely you are not an 
Imperialist?” 

“ Nay, I do not pretend to be a politician at all, but there 
is something in the writing of Pierre Firmin that pains and 
chills me.” 

“ Yet the secret of its popularity,” said Savarin, “ is that it 
says what every one says — only better.” 

“ I see now that it is exactly that which displeases me ; it 
is thg Paris talk condensed into epigram : the graver it is, the 
less it elevates — the lighter it is, the more it saddens.” 

“ That is meant to hit me,” said Savarin, with his sunny 
laugh — “ me whom you call cynical.” 

“ No, dear M. Savarin ; for above all your cynicism is 
genuine gayety, and below it solid kindness. You have 
that which I do not find in M. de Mauleon’s writing, nor 
often in the talk of the salons — ^you have youthfulness.” 

“ Youthfulness at sixty — flatterer !” 

“ Genius does not count its years by the almanac,” said 
Mrs. Morley. “I know what Isaura means — she is quite 
right; there is a breath of winter in M. de Maul^on’s style, and 


THE PARISIANS. 


117 


an odor of fallen leaves. Not that his diction wants vigor: 
on the contrary, it is crisp with hoar-frost. But the senti- 
ments conveyed by the diction are those of a nature sear and 
withered. And it is in this combination of brisk words and 
decayed feelings that his writing represents the talk and mind 
of Paris. He and Paris are always fault-finding : fault-finding 
is the attribute of old age.” 

Colonel Morley looked round with pride, as much as to 
say, “ Clever talker, my wife.” 

Savarin understood that look, and replied to it courteously. 
“ Madame has a gift of expression which Emile de Grirardin 
can scarcely surpass. But when she blames us for fault- 
finding, can she expect the friends of liberty to praise the 
present style of things?” 

“ I should be obliged to the friends of liberty,” said the 
Colonel, dryly, “ to tell me how that state of things is to be 
mended. I find no enthusiasm for the Orleanists, none for a 
Republic ; people sneer at religion ; no belief in a cause, no 
adherence to an opinion. But the worst of it is that, like all 
people who are hlasis^ the Parisians are eager for strange ex- 
citement, and ready to listen to any oracle who promises a 
relief from indifferentism. This it is which makes the Press 
more dangerous in France than it is in any other country. 
Elsewhere the press sometimes leads, sometimes follows, pub- 
lic opinion. Here there is no public opinion to consult, and 
instead of opinion the Press represents passion.” 

“My dear Colonel Morley,” said Savarin, “I hear you very 
often say that a Frenchman cannot understand America. 
Permit me to observe that an American cannot understand 


118 


THE PARISIANS. 


France — or at least Paris. Apropos of Paris — that is a large 
speculation of yours, Louvier, in the new suburb.” 

“ And a very sound one ; I advise you to invest in it. I 
can secure you at present five per cent, on the rental ; that is 
nothing — the houses will be worth double when the Kue de 
Louvier is completed.” 

“ Alas ! I have no money ; my new journal absorbs all my 
capital.” 

“ Shall I transfer the moneys I hold for you, Signorina, 
and add to them whatever you may have made by your de- 
lightful roman^ as yet lying idle, to this investment? I can- 
not say more in its favor than this — I have embarked a very 
large portion of my capital in the Rue de Louvier, and I 
flatter myself that I am not one of those men who persuade 
their friends to do a foolish thing by setting them the example.” 

“ Whatever you advise on such a subject,” said Isaura, gra- 
ciously, “ is sure to be as wise as it is kind.” 

“You consent, then?” 

“ Certainly.” 

Here the Yenosta, who had been listening with great atten- 
tion to Louvier’s commendation of this investment, drew him 
aside, and whispered in his ear — “ I suppose, M. Louvier, that 
one can’t put a little money — a very little money — poco-poco- 
pocoUno^ into your street.” 

“ Into my street ! Ah, I understand — into the speculation 
of the Rue de Louvier I certainly you can. Arrangements 
are made on purpose to suit the convenience of the smallest 
capitalists — from five hundred francs upwards.” 

“ And you feel quite sure that we shall double our money 


THE PARISIANS. 


119 


when the street is completed? I should not like to have my 
brains in my heels.”* 

“ More than double it, I hope, long before the street is 
completed.” 

“ I have saved a little money — very little. I have no rela- 
tions, and I mean to leave it all to the Signorina ; and if it 
could be doubled, why, there would be twice as much to leave 
her.” 

“ So there would,” said Louvier. “ You can’t do better 
than put it all into the Rue de Louvier. I will send you 
the necessary papers to-morrow, when I send hers to the 
Signorina.” 

Louvier here turned to address himself to Colonel Morley, 
but, finding that degenerate son of America indisposed to get 
cent, per cent, for his money when offered by a Parisian, he 
very soon took his leave. The other visitors followed his ex- 
ample, except Rameau, who was left alone with the Yenosta 
and Isaura. The former had no liking for Rameau, who 
showed her none of the attentions her innocent vanity de- 
manded, and she soon took herself off to her own room, to 
calculate the amount of her savings and dream of the Rue de 
Louvier and “ golden joys.” 

Rameau, approaching his chair to Isaura’s, then commenced 
conversation, dryly enough, upon pecuniary matters ; acquit- 
ting himself of the mission with which De Mauleon had 
charged him, the request for a new work from her pen for the 
“ Sens Commun^" and the terms that ought to be asked for 

* “ Avere il cervello nella calcagna/* — viz., to act without prudent 
reflection. 


120 


THE PARISIANS. 


compliance. The young lady-author shrank from this talk. 
Her private income, though modest, sufficed for her wants, 
and she felt a sensitive shame in the sale of her thoughts and 
fancies. 

Putting hurriedly aside the mercantile aspect of the ques- 
tion, she said that she had no other work in her mind at 
present — that, whatever her vein of invention might be, it 
flowed at its own will and could not be commanded. 

“ Nay,” said Rameau, “ this is not true. We fancy, in our 
hours of indolence, that we must wait for inspiration ; but 
once force ourselves to work, and ideas spring forth at the 
wave of the pen. You may believe me here — I speak from 
experience : I, compelled to work, and in modes not to my 
taste — I do my task I know not how. I rub the lamp, ‘ the 
genius comes.’ ” 

“ I have read in some English author that motive power is 
necessary to continued labor : you have motive power, I have 
none.” 

“ I do not quite understand you.” 

“ I mean that a strong ruling motive is required to persist 
in any regular course of action that needs effort : the motive 
with the majority of men is the need of subsistence ; with a 
large number (as in trades or professions), not actually want, 
but a desire of gain, and perhaps of distinction, in their call- 
ing: the desire of professional distinction expands into the 
longings for more comprehensive fame, more exalted honors, 
with the few who become great writers, soldiers, statesmen, 
orators.” 

“ And do you mean to say you have no such motive ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


121 


“ None in the sting of want, none in the desire of gain.” 

“ But fame ?” 

“ Alas ! I thought so once. I know not now — I begin to 
doubt if fame should be sought by women.” This was said 
very dejectedly. 

“ Tut, dearest Signorina ! what gadfly has stung you ? 
Your doubt is a weakness unworthy of your intellect ; and 
even were it not, genius is destiny and will be obeyed : you 
must write, despite yourself — and' your writing miLst bring 
fame, whether you wish it or not.” 

" Isaura was silent, her head drooped on her breast — there 
were tears in her downcast eyes. 

Rameau took her hand, which she yielded to him passively, 
and, clasping it in both his own, he rushed on impulsively : 

“ Oh, I know what these misgivings are when we feel our- 
selves solitary, unloved : how often have they been mine ! 
But how different would labor be if -shared and sympathized 
with by a congenial mind, by a heart that beats in unison with 
one’s own !” 

Isaura’s breast heaved beneath her robe, she sighed softly. 
And then how sweet the fame of which the one we love 
is proud ! how trifling becomes the pang of some malignant 
depreciation, which a word from the beloved one can soothe ! 
Oh, Signorina ! oh, Isaura ! are we not made for each other ? 
Kindred pursuits, hopes and fears in common, the same race 
to run, the same goal to win ! I need a motive stronger than 
I have yet known for the persevering energy that insures suc- 
cess : supply to me that motive. Let me think that whatever 
I win in the strife of the world is a tribute to Isaura. No, 
Yol. II. — F 


122 


THE PARISIANS. 


do not seek to withdraw this hand, let me claim it as mine 
for life. I love you as man never loved before — do not reject 
my love.” 

They say the woman who hesitates is lost. Isaura hesitated, 
but was not yet lost. The words she listened to moved her 
deeply: Offers of marriage she had already received : one 
from a rich middle-aged noble, a devoted musical virtuoso ; 
one from a young avocat fresh from the provinces and some- 
what calculating on her dot y one from a timid but enthusi- 
astic admirer of her genius and her beauty, himself rich, 
handsome, of good birth, but with shy manners and faltering 
tongue. 

But these had made their proposals with the formal respect 
habitual to French decorum in matrimonial proposals. Words 
so eloquently impassioned as Grustave Rameau’s had never 
before thrilled her ears. Yes, she was deeply moved ; and 
yet by that very emotion she knew that it was not to the 
love of this wooer that her heart responded. 

There is a circumstance in the history of courtship familiar 
to the experience of many women, that while the suitor is 
pleading his cause his language may touch every fibre in the 
heart of his. listener, yet substitute, as it were, another pres- 
ence for his own. She may be saying to herself, “ Oh that 
another had said those words !” and be dreaming of the other, 
while she hears the one. 

Thus it was now with Isaura ; and not till Rameau’s voice 
had ceased did that dream pass away, and with a slight shiver 
she turned her face towards the wooer, sadly and pityingly. 

“ It cannot be,” she said in a low whisper ; “ I were not 


THE PARISIANS. 


123 


worthy of your love could I accept it. Forget that you have 
so spoken ; let me still be a friend admiring your genius, in- 
terested in your career. I cannot be more. Forgive me if I 
unconsciously led you to think I could, I am so grieved to 
pain you.” 

“ Am I to understand,” said Rameau, coldly, for his amour- 
propre was resentful, “that the proposals of another have 
been more fortunate than mine?” And he named the young- 
est and comeliest of those whom she had rejected. 

“ Certainly not,” said Isaura. 

Rameau rose and went to the window, turning his face 
from her. In reality he was striving to collect his thoughts 
and decide on the course it were most prudent for him now 
to pursue. The fumes of the absinthe which had, despite 
his previous forebodings, emboldened him to hazard his 
avowal, had now subsided into the languid reaction which is 
generally consequent on that treacherous stimulus, a reaction 
not unfavorable to passionless reflection. He knew that if he 
said he could not conquer his love, he would still cling to 
hope, and trust to perseverance and time, he should compel 
Isaura to forbid his visits and break ofi* their flimiliar inter- 
course. This would be fatal to the chance of yet winning 
her, and would also be of serious disadvantage to his more 
worldly interests. Her literary aid might become essential to 
the journal on which his fortunes depended ; and at all events, 
in her conversation, in her encouragement, in her sympathy 
with the pains and joys of his career, he felt a support, a 
comfort, nay, an inspiration. For the spontaneous gush of 
her fresh thoughts and fancies served to recruit his own jaded 


124 


THE PARISIANS. 


ideas and enlarge his own stinted range of invention. No ; 
he could not commit himself to the risk of banishment from 
Isaura. 

And mingled with meaner motives for discretion, there was 
one of which he was but vaguely conscious, purer and nobler. 
In the society of this girl, in whom whatever was strong and 
high in mental organization became so sweetened into feminine 
grace by gentleness of temper and kindliness of disposition, 
Rameau felt himself a better man. The virgin-like dignity 
with which she moved, so untainted by a breath of scandal, 
amid salons in which the envy of virtues doubted sought to 
bring innocence itself into doubt, warmed into a genuine 
reverence the cynicism of his professed creed. 

While with her, while under her chastening influence, he 
was sensible of a poetry infused within him far more true to 
the Camoenae than all he had elaborated into verse. In these 
moments he was ashamed of the vices he had courted as dis- 
tractions. He imagined that, with her all his own, it would 
be easy to reform. 

No ; to withdraw wholly from Isaura was to renounce his 
sole chance of redemption. 

While these thoughts, which it takes so long to detail, 
passed rapidly through his brain, he felt a soft touch on his 
arm, and, turning his face slowly, encountered the tender, 
compassionate eyes of Isaura. 

“ Be consoled, dear friend,” she said, with a smile, half 
iheering, half mournful. “ Perhaps for all true artists the 
solitary lot is the best.” 

“I will try to think so,” answered Rameau; “and mean- 


THE PARISIANS. 


125 


while I thank you with a full heart for the sweetness with 
which you have checked my presumption — the presumption 
shall not be repeated. Grratefully I accept the friendship you 
deign to tender me. .You bid me forget the words I uttered. 
Promise in turn that you will forget them — or at lea^t con- 
sider them withdrawn. You will receive me still as friend?” 

“ As friend, surely : yes. Do we not both need friends ?” 
She held out her hand as she spoke ; he bent over it, kissea 
it with respect, and the interview thus closed. 


CHAPTEK V. 

It was late in the evening of that day when a man who 
had the appearance of a decent bourgeois^ in the lower grades 
of that comprehensive class, entered one of the streets in the 
Faubourg Montmartre, tenanted chiefly by artisans. He 
paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow house, and drew 
back as he heard footsteps descending a very gloomy staircase. 

The light from a gas-lamp on the street fell full on the 
face of the person thus quitting the house — the face of a 
young and handsome man, dressed with the quiet elegance 
which betokened one of higher rank or fashion than that 
neighborhood was habituated to find among its visitoni. The 
first comer retreatcM promptly into the shade, and, as by sud- 
den impulse, drew his hat low down over his eyes. 

The other man did not, however, obseiwe him, went his 


12G 


THE PARISIANS. 


way with quick step along the street, and entered another 
house some yards distant. 

“ What can that pious Bourbonite do here?” muttered the 
first comer. “ Can he be a conspirator ? Diable ! ’tis as 
dark as Erebus on that staircase.” 

Taking cautious hold of the banister, the man now ascended 
the stairs. On the landing of the first floor there was a gas- 
lamp which threw upward a faint ray that finally died at the 
third story. But at that third story the man’s journey ended ; 
he pulled a bell at the door to the right, and in another mo- 
ment or so the door was opened by a young woman of twenty- 
eight or thirty, dressed very simply, but with a certain neat- 
ness not often seen in the wives of artisans in the Faubourg 
Montmartre. Her face, which, though pale and delicate, re- 
tained much of the beauty of youth, became clouded as she 
recognized the visitor ; evidently the visit was not welcome to 
her. 

“ Monsieur Lebejiu again !” she exclaimed, shrinking back. 

“ At your service, chlre dame. The good man is of course 
at home? Ah, I catch sight of him,” and sliding by the 
woman, M. Lebeau passed the narrow lobby in which she 
stood, through the open door conducting into the room in 
which Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped on his 
hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking abstractedly into 
space. In a corner of the room two small children were play- 
ing languidly with a set of bone tablets inscribed with the 
letters of the alphabet. But whatever the children were doing 
with the alphabet, they were certainly not learning to read 
from it. 


THE PARISIANS. 


127 


The room was of fair size and height, and by no means 
barely or shabbily furnished. There was a pretty clock on the 
mantelpiece. On the wall were hung designs for the decoration 
of apartments, and shelves on which were ranged a few books. 

The window was open, and on the sill were placed flower- 
pots ; you could scent the odor they wafted into the room. 

Altogether, it was an apartment suited to a skilled artisan 
earning high wages. From the room we are now in, branched 
on one side a small but commodious kitchen ; on the other 
side, on which the door was screened by a portiere^ with a 
border prettily worked by female hands — some years ago, for 
it was faded now — was a bedroom, communicating with one 
of less size in which the children slept. We do not enter 
those ^additional rooms, but it may be well here to mention 
them as indications of the comfortable state of an intelligent 
skilled artisan of Paris, who thinks he can better that state by 
some revolution which may ruin his employer. 

Monnier started up at the entrance of Lebeau, and his face 
showed that he did not share the dislike to the visit which 
that of the female partner of his life had evinced. On the con- 
trary, his smile was cordial, and there was a hearty ring in the 
voice which cried out — 

“ I am glad to see you — something to do ? Eh ?” 

“ Always ready to work for liberty, mon hrave.'' 

“ I hope so : what’s in the wind now?” 

“ Oh, Armp,nd, be prudent — be prudent,” cried the woman, 
piteously. “ Do not lead him into further mischief, Monsieui 
Lebeau.” As she faltered forth the last words, she bowed her 
head over the two little ones, and her voice died in sobs. 


128 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Monnier,” said Lebeau, gravely, “ Madame is right. I 
ought not to lead you into further mischief; there are thiee 
in the room who have better claims on you than ” 

“ The cause of the millions?” interrupted Monnier. “ No.” 

He approached the woman and took up one of the children 
very tenderly, stroking back its curls and kissing the face, 
which, if before surprised and saddened by the mother’s sob, 
now smiled gayly under the father’s kiss. 

“ Canst thou doubt, my Heloise,” said the artisan, mildly, 
“ that, whatever I do, thou and these are uppermost in my 
thoughts ? I act for thy interest and theirs — the world as it 
exists is the foe of you three. The world I would replace it 
by will be more friendly.” 

The poor woman made no reply, but as he drew her towards 
him she leaned her head upon his breast and wept quietly. 
Monnier led her thus from the room, whispering words of 
soothing. The children followed the parents into the adjoin* 
ing chamber. In a few minutes Monnier returned, shutting 
the door behind him and drawing, the portiere close. 

“You will excuse me. Citizen, and my poor wife — wife she 
is to me and to all who visit here, though the law says she is 
not.” 

“ I respect Madame the more for her dislike to myself,” 
said Lebeau, with a somewhat melancholy smile. 

“Not dislike to you personally, Citizen, but dislike to the 
business which she connects with your visits ; and she is more 
than usually agitated on that subject this evening, because, 
just before you came, another visitor had produced a great 
effect on her feelings — poor dear Heloise.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


129 


“Indeed! how?” 

“ Well, I was employed in the winter in redecorating the 
holon and boudoir of Madame de Yandemar; her son, M. 
Raoul, took great interest in superintending the details. He 
would sometimes talk to me very civilly, not only on my work, 
but on other matters. It seems that Madame now wants 
something done^^to the salle-d-manger, and asked old Gerard — 
my late master, you know — to send me. Of course he said 
that was impossible — for, though I was satisfied with my own 
wages, I had induced his other men to strike, and was one of 
the ringleaders in the recent strike of artisans in general — a 
dangerous man, and he would have nothing more to do with 
me. So M. Raoul came to see and talk with me — scarce gone 
before you rang at the bell — ^you might have almost met him 
on the stairs.” 

“ I saw a beau monsieur come out of the house. And so 
his talk has affected Madame.” 

“Very much ; it was quite brotherlike. He is one of the re- 
ligious set, and they always get at the weak side of the soft sex.” 

“Ay,” said Lebeau, thoughtfully; “if religion were ban- 
ished from the laws of men, it would still find a refuge in the 
hearts of women. But Raoul de Yandemar did not presume 
to preach to Madame upon the sin of loving you and your 
children?” 

“I should like to have heard him preach to her,” cried 
Monnier, fiercely. “No, he only tried to reason with me 
about matters he could not understand.” 

“ Strikes?” 

“Well, not exactly strikes — he did not contend that we 
9 


130 


THE PARISIANS. 


workmen had not full right to combine and to strike for ob- 
taining fairer money’s worth for our work; but he tried to 
persuade me that where, as in my case, it was not a matter of 
wages, but of political principle — of war against capitalists — I 
could but injure myself and mislead others. He wanted to 
reconcile me to old G4rard, or to let him find me employment 
elsewhere; and when I told him that my honor forbade me to 
make terms for myself till those with whom I was joined were 
satisfied, he said, ‘ But if this lasts much longer your children 
will not look so rosy;’ then poor Heloise began to wring her 
hands and cry, and he took me aside and wanted to press 
money on me as a loan. He spoke so kindly that I could not 
be angry ; but when he found I would take nothing, he asked 
me about some families in the street of whom he had a list, 
and who, he was informed, were in great distress. That is 
true ; I am feeding some of them myself out of my savings. 
You see, this young Monsieur belongs to a society of men, 
many as young as he is, which visits the poor and dispenses 
charity. I did not feel I had a right to refuse aid for others, 
and I told him where his money would be best spent. I sup- 
pose he went there when he left me.” 

“ I know the society you mean, — that of St. Fran§ois de 
Sales. It comprises some of the most ancient of that old 
noblesse to which the ouvriers in the great Bevolution were 
so remorseless.” 

“We ouvriers are wiser now ; we see that in assailing them 
we gave ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the 
capitalists. Our quarrel now is that of artisans against (im 
ployers.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


131 


“ Of course, I am aware of that ; but to leave general 
politics, tell me frankly. How has the strike affected you as 
yet ? I mean in purse. Can ycm stand its pressure ? If not, 
you are above the false pride of not taking help from me, a 
fellow-conspirator, though you were justified in refusing it 
when offered by Raoul de Vandemar, the servant of the 
Church.” 

“ Pardon, I refuse aid from any one except for the com. 
mon cause. But do not fear for me ; I am not pinched as 
yet. I have had high wages for some years, and since I and 
H^loise came together I have not wasted a sou out of doors, 
except in the way of public duty, such as making converts 
at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere ; a glass of beer and a 
pipe don’t cost much. And Heloise is such a housewife, so 
thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love ! No won- 
der -that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at 
her — dares to say she is not my wife, and that her children 
are base-born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to 
society, war to the knife !” 

“ Monnier,” said Lebeau, in a voice that evinced emotion, 
“ listen to me : I have received injuries from society which, 
when they were fresh, half maddened me — that is twenty 
years ago. I would then have thrown myself into any plot 
against society that proffered revenge. But society, my friend, 
is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands ; it may be 
sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a 
day — no. You dash your head against it — you scatter your 
brains, and you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, 
effaces the stain, replaces the stone. I no longer war against 


132 


THE PARISIANS. 


society. I do not war against a system in that society which 
is hostile to me — systems in France are easily overthrown. 
I say this because I want to use you, and I do not want to 
deceive.” 

“ Deceive me, bah ! You are an honest man,” cried Mon- 
nier ; and he seized Lebeau’s hand and shook it with warmth 
and vigor. “ But for you I should have been a mere grumbler. 
No doubt I should have cried out where the shoe pinched, and 
railed against laws that vex me ; but from the moment you 
first talked to me I became a new man. You taught me to 
act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me 
to think and to feel. There is my brother, a grumbler too, 
but professes to have a wiser head than mine. He is always 
warning me against you — against joining a strike — against 
doing anything to endanger my skin. I always went by his 
advice till you taught me that it is well enough for women 
to talk and complain; men should dare and do.” 

“Nevertheless,” said Lebeau, “your brother is a safer 
counselor to a pere de famille than I. I repeat what I have 
so often said before : I desire, and I resolve, that the Empire 
of M. Bonaparte shall be overthrown. I see many concur- 
rent circumstances to render that desire and resolve of prac- 
tical fulfillment. You desire and resolve the same thing. Up 
to that point we can work together. I have encouraged your 
action only so far as it served my design ; but I separate from 
you the moment you would ask me to aid your design in the 
hazard of experiments which the world has never yet favored, 
and trust me, Monnier, the world never will favor.” 

“ That remains to be seen,” said Monnier, with compressed. 


THE r A R I S I A N S. 


133 


obstinate lips. ‘‘ Forgive me, but you are not young ; you 
belong tc an old school.” 

“ Poor young man !” said Lebeau, readjusting his specta- 
cles, “ I recognize in you the genius of Paris, be the genius 
good or evil. Paris is never warned by experience. Be it 
so. I want you so much, your enthusiasm is so fiery, that I 
can concede no more to the mere sentiment which makes me 
say to myself, ‘ It is a shame to use this great-hearted, wrong- 
headed creature for my personal ends.’ I come at once to the 
point — that is, the matter on which I seek you this evening. 
At my suggestion, you have been a ringleader in strikes 
which have terribly shaken the Imperial system, more than 
its Ministers deem ; now I want a man like you to assist in a 
bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural 
priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working- 
class of Paris.”' 

“ Good !” said Monnier. 

“ In a day or two the result of the pUhisaiie will be known. 
The result of universal suffrage will be enormously in favor 
of the desire expressed by one man.” 

“ I don’t believe it,” said Monnier, stoutly. “ France can- 
not be so hoodwinked by the priests.” 

“Take what I say for granted,” resumed Lebeau calmly. 
“ On the 8th of this month we shall know the amount of the 
majority — some millions of French votes. I want Paris to 
separate itself from France and declare against those blunder- 
ing millions. I want an emeute, or rather a menacing demon- 
stration — not a premature revolution, mind. You must avoid 
bloodshed.” 


134 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ It is easy to say that beforehand ; but when a crowd of 

men once meets in the streets of Paris ” 

It can do much by meeting, and cherishing resentment 
if the meeting be dispersed by an armed force, which it would 
be waste of life to resist.” 

“We shall see when the time comes,” said Monnier, with 
a fierce gleam in his bold eyes. 

“ I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evi- 
dent protest of the artisans of Paris against the votes of the 
‘ rurals ’ of France. Do you comprehend me ?” 

“ I think so ; if not, I obey. What we ouvriers want is 
what we have not got — a head to dictate action to us.” 

“ See to this, then. Rouse the men you can command. I 
will take care that you have plentiful aid from foreigners. 
We may trust to the confreres of our council to enlist Poles 
and Italians ; Gaspard le Noy will turn out the volunteer 
rioters at his command. Let the imeute be within, say, a 
week after the vote of the 'pUhiscite is taken. You will need 
that time to prepare.” 

“ Be contented — it shall be done.” 

“ Good-night, then.” Lebeau leisurely took up his hat 
and drew on his gloves ; then, as if struck by a sudden 
thought, he turned briskly on the artisan, and said, in quick, 
blunt tones — 

“ Armand Monnier, explain to me why it is that you — a 
Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, 
the most self-conceited, that exists on the face of earth — 
take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders 
ol’ a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathize in your 


THE PARISIANS. 


135 


ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and 
whose views you candidly own you think are those of an old 
and obsolete school of political reasoners.” 

“You puzzle me to explain,” said Monnier, with an in- 
genuous laugh, that brightened up features stern and hard, 
though comely when in repose. “ Partly, because you are so 
straightforward, and do not talk hlagiie; partly, because I 
don’t think the class I belong to would stir an inch unless we 
had a leader of another class — and you give me. at least that 
leader. Again, you go to that first stage which we all agree 
to take, and — well, do you want me to explain more ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Eh hien! you have warned me, like an honest man ; like 
an honest man I warn you. That first step we take together ; 
I want to go a step further; you retreat, you say. No: 
I reply. You are committed ; that further step you must take, 
or I cry ‘ traitre ! — d la lanterne !' You talk of ‘ superior 
experience:’ bah ! what does experience really tell you? Do 
you suppose that Louis Egalit4, when he began to plot against 
Louis XVI., meant to vote for his kinsman’s execution by 
the guillotine ? Do you suppose that Robespierre, when he 
commenced his career as the foe of capital punishment, fore- 
saw that he should be the Minister of the Reign of Terror ? 
Not a bit of it. Each was committed by his use of those he 
designed for his tools : so must you be — or you perish.” 

Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the frank avowal he 
had courted without betraying a change of countenance. But 
when Armand Monnier had done, a slight movement of his 
lips showed emotion : was it of fear or disdain ? 


136 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Monnier,” he said, gently, “ I am so much obliged to you 
for the manly speech you have made. The scruples which 
my conscience had before entertained are dispelled. I dreaded 
lest I, a declared wolf, might seduce into peril an innocent 
sheep. I see I have to deal with a wolf of younger vigor and 
sharper fangs than myself ; so much the better : obey my 
orders now ; leave it to time to say whether I obey yours 
later. Au revoir'^ 


CHAPTER VI. 

Is aura’s apartment, on the following Thursday evening, 
was more filled than usual. Besides her habitual devotees 
in the artistic or literary world, there were diplomatists and 
deputies commixed with many fair chiefs of lajeunesse dorie ; 
among the latter the brilliant Enguerrand de Vandemar, 
who, deeming the acquaintance of every celebrity essential to 
his own celebrity, in either Carthage, the hean monde^ or the 
demi-monde^ had, two Thursdays before, made Louvier attend 
her soirie and present him. Louvier, though gathering to his 
own salons authors and artists, very rarely favored their rooms 
with his presence ; he did not adorn Isaura’s party that even- 
ing. But Duplessis was there, in compensation. It had 
chanced that Valerie had met Isaura at some house in the 
past winter, and conceived an enthusiastic affection for her : 
since then Valerie came very often to see her, and made a 
point of dragging with her to Isaura’s Thursday reunions her 


THE PARISIANS. 


137 


obedient father. Soirdes, musical or literary, were not much 
in his line ; but he had no pleasure like that of pleasing his 
spoilt child. Our old friend Frederic Lemercier was also one 
of Isaura’a guests that night. He had become more and 
more intimate with Duplessis, and Duplessis had introduced 
him to the fair Valerie as “ unjeune Tiomme plein de moyens^ 
qui ira loin.^' 

Savarin was there, of course, and brought with him an 
English gentleman of the name of Bevil, as well known at 
Paris as in London, — invited everywhere — popular every- 
where, — one of those welcome contributors to the luxuries of 
civilized society who trade in gossip, sparing no pains to get 
the pick of it, and exchanging it liberally sometimes for a 
haunch of venison, sometimes for a cup of tea. His gossip, 
not being adulterated with malice, was in high repute for 
genuine worth. 

If Bevil said, “ This story is a fact,” you no more thought 
of doubting him than you would doubt Bothschild if he said, 
“ This is Lafitte of ’48.” 

Mr. Bevil was at present on a very short stay at Paris, . 
and, naturally wishing to make the most of his time, he did 
not tarry beside Savarin, but, after being introduced to Isaura, 
flitted here and there through the assembly. 

“ Apis Matinaa — 

More modoque — 

Grata carpentis thyma” — 

The bee proffers honey, but bears a sting. 

The room was at its fullest when Grustave Rameau entered, 
accompanied by Monsieur de Mauleon. 


138 


THE PARISIANS. 


Isaura was agreeably surprised by the impression made on 
her by the Vicomte’s appearance and manner. His writings, 
and suoh as she had heard of his earlier repute, had prepared 
her to see a man decidedly old, of withered aspect and sar- 
donic smile — ^aggressive in demeanor — forward or contemptu- 
ous in his very politeness — a Mephistopheles engrafted on the 
stem of a Don Juan. She was startled by the sight of one 
who, despite his forty-eight years — and at Paris a man is 
generally older at forty-eight than he is elsewhere — seemed 
in the zenith of ripened manhood — startled yet more by the 
singular modesty of a deportment too thoroughly high-bred 
not to be quietly simple — startled most by a melancholy ex- 
pression in eyes that could be at times soft, though always so 
keen, and in the grave pathetic smile which seemed to disarm 
censure of past faults in saying, “ I have known sorrows.” 

He did not follow up his introduction to his young hostess 
by any of the insipid phrases of compliment to which she was 
accustomed ; but, after expressing in grateful terms his thanks 
for the honor she had permitted Rameau to confer on him, he 
moved aside, as if he had no right to detain her from other 
guests more worthy her notice, towards the doorway, taking 
his place by Enguerrand amidst a group of men of whom 
Duplessis was the central figure. 

At that time — the first week in May, 1870 — all who were 
then in Paris will remember there -were two subjects upper- 
most in the mouths of men : first, plebiscite ; secondly, the 
conspiracy to murder the Emperor, — which the disaffected 
considered to be a mere fable, a pretense got up in time to 
serve the pUhiscite and prop the Empire. 


THE PARISIANS. 


139 


Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been expressing 
himself with unwonted animation. A loyal and earnest Im- 
perialist, it was only with effort that he could repress his scorn 
of that meanest sort of gossip which is fond of ascribing petty 
motives to eminent men. 

To him nothing could be more clearly evident than the 
reality of this conspiracy, and he had no tolerance for the 
malignant absurdity of maintaining that the Emperor or his 
Ministers could be silly and wicked enough to accuse seventy- 
two persons of a crime which the police had been instructed 
to invent. 

As De Maul4on approached, the financier brought his speech 
to an abrupt close. He knew in the Vicomte de Maul^on 
the writer of articles which had endangered the government 
and aimed no pointless shafts against its Imperial head. 

“ My cousin,” said Enguerrand, gayly, as he exchanged a 
cordial shake of the hand with Victor, “ I congratulate you 
on the fame of journalist, into which you have vaulted, armed 
cMp-d-pie, like a knight of old into his saddle ; but I don’t 
sympathize with the means you have taken to arrive at that 
renown. I am not myself an Imperialist — a Vandemar can 
be scarcely that. But if I am compelled to be on board a 
ship, I don’t wish to take out its planks and let in an ocean, 
when all offered to me instead is a crazy tub and a rotten rope.” 

“ 7Vh-bie7i,'^ said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and 
phrase. 

“ But,” said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, “ would you 
like the captain of the ship, when the sky darkened and the 
sea rose, to ask the common sailors ‘ whether they approved 


140 


THE PARISIANS. 


his conduct on altering his course or shortening his sail’? 
Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope than to a ship 
in which the captain consults di pUhiscitey 

“ Monsieur,” said Duplessis, “ your metaphor is ill-chosen — 
no metaphor indeed is needed. The head of the State was 
chosen by the voice of the people, and, when required to 
change the form of administration which the people had sanc- 
tioned, and inclined to do so from motives the most patriotic 
and liberal, he is bound again to consult the people from whom 
he holds his power. It is not, however, of the plebiscite we 
were conversing, so much as of the atrocious conspiracy of 
assassins — so happily discovered in time. I presume that 
Monsieur de Mauleon must share the indignation which true 
Frenchmen of every party must feel against a combination 
united by the purpose of murder.” 

The Vicomte bowed, as in assent. 

“ But do you believe,” asked a Liberal Deputy, “ that such 
a combination existed, except in the visions of the police or 
the cabinet of a Minister ?” 

Duplessis looked keenly at De Maul4on while this question 
was put to him. Belief or disbelief in the conspiracy was 
with him, and with many, the test by which a sanguinary 
revolutionist was distinguished from an honest politician. 

“ answered De Mauleon, shrugging his shoulders, 

“ I have only one belief left ; but that is boundless. I believe 
in the folly of mankind in general, and of Frenchmen in par- 
ticular. That seventy-two men should plot the assassination 
of a sovereign on whose life interests so numerous and so 
watchful depend, and imagine they could keep a secret 


THE PARISIANS. 


141 


whi ;li any Irunkard among them would blab out, any tatter- 
demalion would sell, is a hetise so gross that I think it highly 
probable. But pardon me if I look upon the politics of Paris 
much as I do upon its mud — one must pass through it when 
one walks in the street ; one changes one’s shoes before enter- 
ing the mlon. A word with you, Enguerrand,” — and taking 
his kinsman’s arm, he drew him aside from the circle. “ What 
has become of your brother? I see nothing of him now.” 

“ Oh, Baoul,” answered Enguerrand, throwing himself 
on a couch in a recess, and making room for De Maul^on 
beside him — “ Raoul is devoting himself to the distressed 
ouvriers who have chosen to withdraw from work. When 
he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and fuel 
on their wives and children. My good mother encourages 
him in this costly undertaking, and no one but you who 
believe in the infinity of human folly would credit me when 
I tell you that his eloquence has drawn from me all the argent 
de poclie I get from our shop. As for himself, he has sold 
his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare,- saying, ‘ That is a 
meal for a family.’ Ah ! if he had but gone into the Church, 
what a saint would have deserved canonization !” 

“ Do not lament — he will probably have what is a better 
claim than mere saintship on Heaven — martyrdom, ” said De 
Mauleon, with a smile in which sarcasm disappeared in melan- 
choly. ‘‘ Poor Raoul ! And what ^of my other cousin, the 
heau MarquUf Several months ago his Legitimist faith 
seemed vacillating — he talked to me very fairly about the 
duties a Frenchman owed to France, and hinted that he 
should place his sword at the command of Napoleon III. I 


142 


THE PARISIANS. 


have not yet heard of him as a soldat de France — I hear a 
great deal of him as a wveur de Paris'^ 

“ Don’t you know why his desire for a military career was 
frost-bitten ?” 

“ No ! why ?” 

“ Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most 
things known to a gamin of Paris. When he conscientiously 
overcame the scruples natural to one of his name, and told the 
Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready to fight under the 
flag of France whatever its color, he had a vague reminiscence 
of ancestral Bochebriants earning early laurels at the head of 
their regiments. At all events, he assumed as a matter of 
course that he, in the first rank as gentilhomme, would enter 
the army, if as a sous-lientenant^ still as gentilhomme. But 
when told that, as he had been at no military college, he could 
only enter the ranks as a private soldier — herd with private 
soldiers for at least two years before, passing througn the 
grade of corporal, his birth, education, and habits of life could, 
with great favor, raise him to the station of a sous-lieutcn>inty 
you may conceive that the martial ardor of a Bochebriant was 
somewhat cooled.” 

“ If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, and 
how difiicult a man well educated, well brought up, finds it, 
first, to endure the coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy^ 
and then, having endured and been compelled to share them, 
ever enforce obedience and discipline as a superior among 
those with whom just before he was an equal, his ardor would 
not have been merely cooled — it would have been changed 
into despair for the armies of France if hereafter they are 


THE PARISIANS. 


143 


met by those whose officers have been trained to be officers 
from the outset, and have imbibed from their cradle an edu- 
cation not taught to the boy-pedants from school — the twofold 
education how with courtesy to command, how with dignity 
to obey. To return to E-ochebriant, such salons as I frequent 
are somewhat formal — as befits my grave years and my modest 
income ; I may add, now that you know my vocation, — befits 
me also as a man who seeks rather to be instructed than 
amused. In those salons I did, last year, sometimes, however, 
meet Eochebriant — as I sometimes still meet you ; but of late 
he has deserted such sober reunions, and I hear with pain that 
he is drifting among those rocks against which my own youth 
was shipwrecked. Is the report true?” 

“ I fear,” said Enguerrand, reluctantly, “ that at least the 
report is not unfounded. And my conscience accuses me of 
having been to blame in the first instance. You see, when 
Alain made terms with Louvier by which he obtained a very 
fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally wished that a 
man of so many claims to social distinction, and who repre- 
sents the oldest branch of my family, should take his right 
place in our world of Paris. I gladly therefore presented him 
to the houses and the men most d la mode— advised him as 
to the sort of establishment, in apartments, horses, etc., 
which it appeared to me that he might reasonably afibrd — I 
mean such as, with his means, I should have prescribed to 
myself ” 

“Ah! I understand. But you, dear Enguerrand, are a 
born Parisian, every inch of you ; and a bom Parisian is, 
whatever be thought to the contrary, the best manager in the 


144 


THE PARISIANS. 


world. He alone achieves the difficult art of uniting thrift 
with show. It is your Provincial, who comes to Paris in the 
freshness of undimmed youth, who sows his whole life on its 
barren streets. I guess the rest : Alain is ruined.” 

Enguerrand, who certainly was so far a born Parisian that, 
with all his shrewdness and savoir-faire^ he had a wonderfully 
sympathetic heart, very easily moved, one way or the other — 
Enguerrand winced at his elder kinsman’s words, compliment- 
arily reproachful, and said, in unwonted tones of humility, 
“ Cousin, you are cruel, but you are in the right. I did not 
calculate sufficiently on the chances of Alain’s head being 
turned. Hear my excuse. He seemed to me so much more 
thoughtful than most at our age are, so much more stately 
and proud — well, also so much more pure, so impressed with 
the responsibilities of station, so bent on retaining the old 
lands in Bretagne ; by habit and rearing so simple and self- 
denying, — that I took it for granted he was proof against 
stronger temptations than those which a light nature like my 
own puts aside with a laugh. And at first I had no reason 
to think myself deceived, — when, some months ago, I heard 
that he was getting into debt, losing at play, paying court 
to female vampires, who drain the life-blood of those on 
whom they fasten their fatal lips. Oh, then I spoke to him 
earnestly I” 

“And in vain?” 

“ In vain. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, whom you 
may have heard of ” 

“ Certainly, and met ; a friend of Louvier’s ” 

“ The same man — has obtained over him an influence 


THE PARISIANS. 


145 


which so far subdues mine that he almost challenged me 
when I told him his friend was a scamp. In fine, though 
Alain and I have not actually quarreled, we pass each other 
with, '‘Bon- jour ^ mon amV ” 

“ Hum ! My dear Enguerrand, you have done all you 
could. Flies will be flies, and spiders, spiders, till the earth 
is destroyed by a comet. Nay, I met a distinguished natu- 
ralist in America who maintained that we shall find^flies and 
spiders in the next world.” 

“You have been in America? Ah, true — I remember, 
Oalifornia !” 

“ Where have I not been ? Tush ! music — shall I hear 
our fair hostess sing ?” 

“ I am afraid not to-night : because Madame S is to 

favor us, and the Signorina makes it a rule not to sing at her 
own house when professional artists do. You must hear the 
Cicogna quietly some day; such a voice ! nothing like it.” 

Madame S , who, since she had learned that there was 

no cause to apprehend that Isaura might become her profes- 
sional rival, conceived for her a wonderful affection, and will- 
ingly contributed her magnificent gifts of song to the charms 
of Isaura’s salon^ now began a fragment from "I Puritanij' 
which held the audience as silent as the ghosts listening to 
Sappho ; and when it was over, several of the guests slipped 
away, especially those who disliked music and feared Madame 

S- might begin again. Enguerrand was not one of such 

soulless recreants, but he had many other places to go to. 
Besides, Madame S was no novelty to him. 

De Mauleon now approached Isaura, who was seated next 
VOL. 11.— G 10 


146 


THE PARISIANS. 


to Yal^rie, and, after well-merited eulogium on Madame 
S ’s performance, slid into some critical comparisons be- 

tween that singer and those of a former generation, which 
interested Isaura, and evinced to her quick perceptions that 
kind of love for music which has been refined by more knowl- 
edge of the art than is common to mere amateurs. 

“ You have studied music. Monsieur de Mauleon,” she said. 
“ Do you not perform yourself?” 

“ I ? No. But music has always had a fatal attraction for 
me. I ascribe half the errors of my life to that temperament 
which makes me too fascinated by harmonies — too revolted 
by discords.” 

“ I should have thought such a temperament would have 
led from errors — are not errors discords ?” 

“ To the inner sense, yes ; but to the outer sense not 
always. Vii*tues are often harsh to the ear — errors very 
sweet-voiced. The sirens did not sing out of tune. Better 
to stop one’s ears than glide on Scylla or be merged into 
Charybdis.” 

“ Monsieur,” cried Val4rie, with a pretty hrusquerie which 
became her well, “ you talk like a Vandal.” 

“ It is, I think, by Mademoiselle Duplessis that I have the 
honor to be rebuked. Is Monsieur your father very suscepti- 
ble to music ?” 

“ Well, I cannot say that he cares much for it. But then 
his mind is so practical ” 

“ And his life so successful. No Scylla, no Charybdis for 
him. However, Mademoiselle, I am not quite the Vandal 
you suppose. I do not say that susceptibility to the influence 


THE PARISIANS. 


147 


of music may not be safe, nay, healthful, to others — it was 
not so to me in my youth. It can do me no harm now.” 

Here Duplessis came up, and whispered his daughter “ it 
was time to leave : they had promised the Duchesse de Ta- 
rasoon to assist at the soiree she gave that night.” Valerie 
took her father’s arm with a brightening smile and a height- 
ened color. Alain de Rochebriant might probably be at the 
Duchesse’s. 

“ Are you not going also to the Hotel de Tarascon, M. de 
Maul^on ?” asked Duplessis. 

“ No ; I was never there but once. The Duchesse is an 
Imperialist, at once devoted and acute, and no doubt very soon 
divined my lack of faith in her idols.” 

Duplessis frowned, and hastily led Valerie away. 

In a few minutes the room was comparatively deserted. 
De Mauleon, however, lingered by the side of Isaura till all 
the other guests were gone. Even then he lingered still, and 
renewed the interrupted conversation with her, the Venosta 
joining therein ; and so agreeable did he make himself to her 
Italian tastes by a sort of bitter-sweet wisdom like that of her 
native proverbs — comprising much knowledge of mankind on 
the unflattering side of humanity in that form of pleasantry 
which has a latent sentiment of pathos — that the Venosta 
exclaimed — 

“ Surely you must have been brought up in Florence !” 

There was that in De ' Maul4on’s talk hostile to all which 
we call romance that excited the imagination of Isaura, and 
compelled her instinctive love for whatever is more sweet, 
more beautiful, more ennobling on the many sides of human 


148 


THE PARISIANS. 


life^ to oppose what she deemed the paradoxes of a man who 
had taught himself to belie even his own nature. She be- 
came eloquent, and her countenance, which in ordinary moments 
owed much of its beauty to an expression of meditative gentle- 
ness, was now lighted up by the energy of earnest conviction 
— the enthusiasm of an impassioned zeal 

Gradually De Mauleon relaxed his share in the dialogue, 
and listened to her, rapt and dreamingly as in his fiery youth 
he had listened to the songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura ! 
She was defending her own cause, though unconsciously — • 
defending the vocation of art as the embellisher of external 
nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which 
dwells crude, but plastic, in the soul of man ; indeed therein 
the creator of a new nature, strengthened, expanded, and 
brightened in proportion as it accumulates the ideas that tend 
beyond the boundaries of the visible and material nature, 
which is finite ; forever seeking in the unseen and the spiritual 
the goals in the infinite which it is their instinct to divine. 
“ That which you contemptuously call romance,” said Isaura, 
“ is not essential only to poets and artists. The most real 
side of every life, from the earliest dawn of mind in the 
infant, is the romantic. 

“ When the child is weaving flower-chains, chasing butter- 
flies, or sitting apart and dreaming what it will do in the 
future, is not that the child’s real life, and yet is it not also 
the romantic ?” 

“ But there comes a time when we weave no flower-chains 
and chase no butterflies.” 

“ Is it so ? — still, on one side of life, flowers and butterflies 


THE PARISIANS. 


149 


may be found to the last ; and at least to the last are there no 
dreams of the future? Have you no such dreams at this 
moment ? and without the romance of such dreams, would 
there be any reality to human life which could distinguish it 
from the life of the weed that rots on Lethe ?” 

“ Alas, Mademoiselle,” said He Mauleon, rising to take 
leave, “ your argument must rest without answer. I would 
not, if I could, confute the beautiful belief that belongs to 
youth, fusing into one rainbow all the tints that can color the 
world. But the Signora Venosta will acknowledge the truth 
of an old saying expressed in every civilized language, but 
best, perhaps, in that of the Florentine — ‘ You might as well 
physic the dead as instruct the old.’ ” 

“ But you are not o’ld !” said the Yenosta, with Florentine 
politeness, — “ you ! not a gray hair.” 

“ ’Tis not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age 
of the heart,” answered Be Mauleon, in another paraphrase 
of Italian proverb, and he was gone. 

As he walked homeward, through deserted streets, Victor 
de Maul4on thought to himself, “ Poor girl, how I pity her 1 
married to a Gustave Bameau — married to any man — nothing 
in the nature of man, be he the best and the cleverest, can 
ever realize the dream of a girl who is pure and has genius. 
Ah, is not the converse true ? What girl, the best and the 
cleverest, comes up to the ideal of even a commonplace man 
— if he ever dreamed of an ideal !” Then he paused, and in 
a moment or so afterwards his thought knew such question- 
ings no more.- It turned upon personalities, on stratagems 
and plots, on ambition. The man had more than his share 


150 


THE PARISIANS. 


of that peculiar susceptibility which is one of the character- 
istics of his countrymen — susceptibility to immediate impulse 
— susceptibility to fleeting impressions. It was a key to many 
mysteries in his character when he owned his subjection to 
the influence of music, and in music recognized not the ser- 
aph’s harp, but the siren’s song. If you could have perma- 
nently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments 
of his life even now— some moment of exquisite kindness — 
of superb generosity — of dauntless courage — you would have 
secured a very rare specimen of noble humanity. But so to 
fix him was impossible. 

That impulse of the moment vanished the moment after ; 
swept aside by the force of his very talents — talents concen- 
trated by his intense sense of individuality — sense of wrongs 
or of rights — interests or objects personal to himself. He 
extended the royal saying, “ L'etat^ c'est Tnoiy' to words far 
more grandiloquent. “ The universe, ’tis I.” The Venosta 
would have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had 
said, with good-humored laugh, “ I dead, the world is dead I” 
That is an Italian proverb, and means much the same thing. 


book: -viii. 


CHAPTER L 

On the 8th of May the vote of the plebiscite was recorded, 
— between seven and eight millions of Frenchmen in support 
of the Imperial programme — in plain words, of the Emperor 
himself — against a minority of 1,500,000. But among the 
1,500,000 were the old throne-shakers — those who compose 
and those who lead the mob of Paris. On the 14th, as 
Rameau was about to quit the editorial bureau of his printing- 
office, a note was brought in to him which strongly excited 
his nervous system. It contained a request to see him forth- 
with, signed by those two distinguished foreign members of 
the Secret Council of Ten, Thaddeus Loubinsky and Leonardo 
Raselli. 

The meetings of that Council had been so long suspended 
that Rameau had almost forgotten its existence. He gave 
orders to admit the conspirators. The two men entered, — 
the Pole, tall, stalwart, and with martial stride — the Italian, 
small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless, cat-like step, — both 
looking wondrous threadbare, and in that state called “ shabby- 
genteel,” which belongs to the man who cannot work for his 
livelihood and assumes a superiority over the man who can. 
Their outward appearance was in notable discord with that of 
the poet-politician — he all new in the last fashions of Parisian 

151 


152 


THE PARISIANS. 


elegance, and redolent of Parisian prospe !ty and extrait de 
Mousseline I 

“ Confrere^"' said the Pole, seating himself on the edge of 
the table, while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece 
and glanced round the room with furtive eye, as if to detect 
its innermost secrets or decide where safest to drop a lucifer- 
raatch for its conflagi-ation, — “ confrere j" said the Pole, “ your 
country needs you ” 

“ Kather, the cause of all countries,” interposed the Italian, 
softly, — “ Humanity.” 

“ Please to explain yourselves. But stay, wait a moment,” 
said Rameau ; and, rising, he went to the door, opened it, 
looked forth, ascertained that the coast was clear, then re- 
closed the door as cautiously as a prudent man closes his pocket 
whenever shabby-genteel visitors appeal to him in the cause 
of his country, still more if they appeal in that of Humanity. 

“ Confrere^^^ said the Pole, “ this day a movement is to be 
made — a demonstration on behalf of your country ” 

“ Of Humanity,” again softly interposed the Italian. 

“ Attend and share it,” said the Pole. 

“ Pardon me,” said Rameau ; “ I do not know what you 
mean. I am now the editor of a journal in which the pro- 
prietor does not countenance violence ; and if you come to 
me as a member of the Council, you must be aware that 1 
should obey no orders but those of its president, whom I have 
not seen for nearly a year ; indeed, I know not if the Council 
still exists.” 

“ The Council exists, and with it the obligations it im- 
poses,” replied Thaddeus. 


THE PARISIANS. 


153 


“ Pampered with luxury,” here the Pole raised his voice, 
“do you dare to reject the voice of Poverty and Free- 
dom?” 

“ Plush, dear but too vehement confr^re^'' murmured the 
bland Italian ; “ permit me to dispel the reasonable doubts of 
our confrere'' And he took out of his breast-pocket a paper 
which he presented to Kameau ; on it were written these 
words : — 

“ This evening. May 14th. Demonstration.^Faubourg 
du Temple. — Watch events, under orders of A. M. Bid the 
youngest member take that first opportunity to test nerves 
and discretion. He is not to act, but to observe.” 

No name was appended to this instruction, but a cipher 
intelligible to all members of the Council as significant of its 
president, Jean Lebeau. 

“ If I err not,” said the Italian, “ Citizen Kameau is our 
youngest confrere. 

Kameau paused. The penalties for disobedience to an 
order of the president of the Council were too formidable to 
be disregarded. There could be no doubt that, though his 
name was not mentioned, he, Kameau, was accurately desig- 
nated as the youngest member of the Council. Still, how- 
ever he might have owed his present position to the recom- 
mendation of Lebeau, there was nothing in the conversation 
of M. de Maul^on which would warrant participation in a 
popular 6meute by the editor of a journal belonging to that 
mocker of the mob. Ah I but — and here again he glanced 
over the paper— he was asked “ not to act, but to observe.” 
To observe was the duty of a journalist. He might go to 

G* 


154 


THE PARISIANS. 


the demonstration, as De Mauleon confessed Itc had gone to 
the Communist Club, a philosophical spectator. 

“ You do not disobey this order ?” said the Pole, crossing 
his arms. 

“ I shall certainly go into the Faubourg du Temple this even- 
ing,” answered Rameau, dryly ; “ I have business that way.” 

Bon r said the Pole; “I did not think you would fail 
us, though you do edit a journal which says not a word on 
the duties that bind the French people to the resuscitation of 
Poland.” 

And is not pronounced in decided accents upon the cause 
of the human race,” put in the Italian, whispering. 

“ I do not write the political articles in ‘ie Sens CommunJ ” 
answered Rameau ; “ and I suppose that our president is satis- 
fied with them, since he recommended me to the preference 
of the person who does. Have you more to say ? Pardon 
me; my time is precious, for it does not belong to me.” 

“ Enough !” said the Italian : “we will detain you no 
longer.” Here, with bow and smile, he glided towards the door. 

Confrhre^^' muttered the Pole, lingering, “you must have 
become very rich I — do not forget the wrongs of Poland — I 
am their representative — I — speaking in that character, not 
as myself individually — I have not breakfasted !” 

Rameau, too thoroughly Parisian not to be as lavish of his 
own money as he was envious of another’s, slipped some 
pieces of gold into the Pole’s hand. The Pole’s bosom heaved 
with manly emotion : “ These pieces bear the efiigies of the 
tyrant — I accept them as redeemed from disgrace by their 
uses to Freedom.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


155 


“ Share them with Signor Kaselli in the name of the same 
cause,” whispered Rameau, with a smile he might have 
plagiarized from De Maulcon. 

The Italian, whose ear was inured to whispers, heard and 
turned round as he stood at the threshold. 

“ No, confrlre of France — no, confrere of Poland — I am 
Italian. All ways to take the life of an enemy are honorable 
— no way is honorable which begs money from a friend.” 

An hour or so later, Rameau was driven in his comfort- 
able cowpi to the Faubourg du Temple. 

Suddenly, at the angle of a street his coachman was stopped 
— a rough-looking man appeared at the door — Descend, mon 
petit hourgeois^ Behind the rough-looking man were men- 
acing faces. 

Rameau was not physically a coward — very few French- 
men are, still fewer Parisians; and still fewer, no matter 
what their birthplace, the men whom we call vain — the 
men who overmuch covet distinction and overmuch dread 
reproach. 

“ Why should I descend at your summons?” said Rameau, 
haughtily. '‘'‘Bah ! Coachman, drive on !” . 

The rough-looking man opened the door, and silently ex- 
tended a hand to Rameau, saying gently, “ Take my advice, 
mon bourgeois. Get out — we want your carriage. It is a 
day of barricades — every little helps, even your coupiT 

While this man spoke, others gesticulated ; some shrieked 
out, “ He is an employer ! he thinks he can drive over the 
employed!” Some leader of the crowd — a Parisian crowd 
always has a classical leader, who has never read the classics 


156 


THE PARISIANS. 


— ^tliiindered forth, “ Tarquin’s car !” “ Down with Tarquin !’* 
Therewith came a yell, “A la lanterne — Tarquin !" 

We Anglo-Saxons, of the old country or the new, are not 
familiarized to the dread roar of a populace delighted to have 
a Roman authority Tor tearing us to pieces ; still, Americans 
know what is lynch law. Rameau was in danger of lynch 
law, — when suddenly a face not unknown to him interposed 
between himself and the rough-looking man. 

“ Ha !” cried this new-comer, “my young con/rhre, Gustave 
Rameau, welcome ! Citizens, make way ; I answer for this 
patriot — I, Aimand Monnier. Hei comes to help us. Is this 
the way you receive him?” Then in a low voice to Rameau, 
“ Come out. Give your coupe to the barricade. What mat- 
ters such rubbish? Trust to me — I expected you. Hist! 

• — Lebeau bids me see that you are safe.” 

Rameau then, seeking to drape himself in majesty, — as the 
aristocrats of journalism in a city wherein no other aristocracy 
is recognized naturally and commendably do, when ignorance 
combined with physical strength asserts itself to be a power, 
beside which the power of knowledge is what a learned poodle 
is to a tiger — Rameau then descended from his coupe, and said 
to this Titan of labor, as a French marquis might have said 
to his valet, and as, when the French marquis has become 
a ghost of the past, the man who keeps a coiip6 says to the 
m.in who mends its wheels, “ Honest fellow, I trust you.” 

Monnier led the journalist through the mob to the rear of 
the barricade hastily constructed. Here were assembled very 
motley groups. 

The majority were ragged boys, the gamins of Paris, com- 


THE PARISIANS. 


157 


mingled with several women of no reputable appearance, some 
dingilj, some gaudily appareled. The crowd did not appear 
as if the business in hand was a very serious one. Amidst 
the din of voices the sound of laughter rose predominant; jests 
and hons mots flew from lip to lip. The astonishing good 
humor of the Parisians was not yet excited into the ferocity 
that grows out of it by a street-contest. It was less like a 
popular emeute than a gathering of schoolboys bent not less 
on fun than on mischief. But still, amid this gayer crowd 
were sinister, lowering faces ; the fiercest were not those of 
the very poor, but rather of artisans, who, to judge by their 
dress, seemed well OS' — of men belonging to yet higher grades. 
Bameau distinguished among these the medecin des fauvres^ 
the philosophical atheist, sundry young long-haired artists, 
middle-aged writers for- the Bepublican press, in close neigh- 
borhood with ruffians of villainous aspect who might have 
been newly returned from the galleys. None werS regularly 
armed ; still, revolvers and muskets and long knives were by 
no means unfrequently interspersed among the rioters. The 
whole scene was to Bameau a confused panorama, and the 
dissonant tumult of yells and laughter, of menace and joke, 
began rapidly to act on his impressionable nerves. He felt 
that which is the prevalent character of a Parisian riot — the 
intoxication of an impulsive sympathy; coming there as a 
reluctant spectator, if action commenced he would have been 
borne readily into the thick of the action — he could not have 
helped it ; already he grew impatient of the suspense of strife. 
Monnier, having deposited him safely with his back to a wall, 
at the corner of a street handy for flight, if flight became ex 


158 


THE PARISIANS. 


pedient, had left him for several miuutes, having business 
elsewhere. Suddenly the whisper of the Italian stole into his 
ear — “ These men are fools. This is not the way to do busi- 
ness; this does not hurt the Robber of Nice — Garibaldi’s 
Nice : they should have left it to me.” 

“ What would you do ?” 

“ I have invented a new machine,” whispered the Frien<l 
of Humanity ; “ it would remove all at one blow — lion and 
lioness, whelp and jackals — and then the Revolution if you 
will ! not this paltry tumult. The cause of the human race is 
being frittered away. I am disgusted with Lebeau. Thrones 
are not overturned by gamins ^ 

Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoined him. The 
artisan’s face was overcast — his lips compressed, yet quivering 
with indignation. “ Brother,” he said to Rameau, “ to-day 
the cause is betrayed” (the word trahi was just then coming 
into vogue at Paris) — “ the hhuses I counted on are recreant. 
I have just learned that all is quiet in the other guartiers 
where the rising was to have been simultaneous with this. 
We are in a guet-apens — the soldiers will be down on us in 
a few minutes; hark! don’t you hear the distant tramp? 
Nothing for us but to die like men. Our blood will be 
avenged later. Here,” and he thrust a revolver into Rameau’s 
hand. Then, with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd, 
he shouted, “ Vive le peuple The rioters caught and re- 
echoed the cry, mingled with other cries, “ Vive la Repuhligue! 

Vive le drapeau rouge /” 

The shouts were yet at their full, when a strong hand 
grasped Monuier’s arm, and a clear, deep, but low voice thrilled 


THE PARISIANS. 


159 


tlirough liis ear — “ Obey ! — I warned you. No figlit to-day. 
Time not ripe. All that is needed is done — do not undo it. 
Hist ! the sergeiis de mile are force enough to disperse the 
swarm of those gnats. Behind the sergens come soldiers who 
will not fraternize. Lose not one life to-day. The morrow 
when we shall need every man — nay, every gamin — ^will dawn 
soon. Answer not. Obey !” The same strong hand, quitting 
its hold on Monnier, then seized Bameau by the wrist, and 
the same deep voice said, “ Come with me.” Bameau, turn- 
ing in amaze not unmixed with anger, saw beside him a tall 
man with sombrero hat pressed close over his head, and in the 
blouse of a laborer, but through such disgTiise he recognized 
the pale gray whiskers and green spectacles of Lebeau. He 
yielded passively to the grasp that led him away down the 
deserted street at the angle. 

At the farther end of that street, however, was heard the 
steady thud of hoofs. 

“ The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear,” said Lebeau, 
calmly ; “ we have not a moment to lose — this way.” And he 
plunged into a dismal court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, 
followed mechanically by Bameau. They issued at last on 
the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were quietly 
sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. “ Now 
take that fiacre and go home ; write down your impressions 
of what you have seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mau- 
leon.” Lebeau here quitted him. 

Meanwhile, all happened as Lebeau had predicted. The 
- sergens de viUe showed themselves in front of the barricades, 
a small troop of mounted soldiers appeared in the rear. The 


160 


THE PARISIANS. 


mob greeted tbe first with yells and a shower of stones ; at 
the sight of the last they fied in all directions ; and the sergeiis 
de ville^ calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in triumph, 
as prisoners of war, four gamins^ three women, and one Irish- 
man loudly protesting innocence and shrieking “ Murther !” 
So ended that first inglorious rise against the pUhiscite and 
the Empire, on the 14th of May, 1870. 

From Isaura Oicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. 

“ Saturday, May 21, 1870. 

“ I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of im- 
pressions wholly new to me. I have this day witnessed one 
of those scenes which take us out of our private life, not into 
the world of fiction, but of history, in which we live as in the 
life of a nation. You know how intimate I have become with 
Yal4rie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her com- 
bination of petulant willfulness and guileless naivete that she 
might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her 
father, who is in great favor at court, had tickets for the Salle 
des Etats of the Louvre to-day — when, as the journals will 
tell you, the results of the 'pUhiscife were formally announced 
to the Emperor — and I accompanied him and Valerie. I 
felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for months 
in an atmosphere of false rumors, for those I chiefly meet in 
the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and 
flaneurs who haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the 
Emperor. . They agree, at least, in asserting the decline of 
his popularity — the failure of his intellectual powers ; in pre- 
dicting his downfall — deriding the notion of a successor in 
his son. Well, I know not how to reconcile these statements 
with the spectacle I have beheld to-day. 

“ In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor 
entered the hall, it seemed as if one heard the voice of the 


THE PARISIANS. 


161 


France lie had just appealed to. If the Fates are really 
weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in hues which, to 
mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy. 

“ You will read the address of the President of the Corps 
Legislatif ; I wonder how it will strike you. I own fairly 
that me it wholly carried away. At each sentiment I mur- 
mured to myself, ‘ Is not this true? and, if true, are France 
and human nature ungrateful ?’ 

“ ‘ It is now,’ said the President, ‘ eighteen years since 
France, wearied with confusion, and anxious for security, con- 
fiding in your genius and the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in 
your hands, together with the- Imperial Crown, the authority 
which the public necessity demanded.’ Then the address 
proceeded to enumerate the blessings that ensued — social order 
speedily restored — the welfare of all classes of society pro- 
moted — advances in commerce and manufactures to an extent 
hitherto unknown. Is not this true? and, if so, are you, 
noble daughter of France, ungrateful ? 

“ Then came words which touched me deeply — me, who, 
knowing nothing of politics, still feel the link that unites 
Art to Freedom ; ‘But from the first your Majesty has looked 
forward to the time when this concentration of power would 
no longer correspond to the aspirations of a tranquil and re- 
assured country, and, foreseeing the progress of modern society, 
you proclaimed that “ Liberty must be the crowning of the 
edifice.” ’ Passing then over the previous gradual advances 
in popular government, the President came to the ‘ present 
self-abnegation, unprecedented in history,’ and to the vindica- 
tion of pUh'iscite which I have heard so assailed, viz., — 
fidelity to the great principle upon which the throne was 
founded required that so important a modification of a power 
bestowed by the people should not be made without the par- 
ticipation of the people themselves. Then, enumerating the 
millions who had welcomed the new form of government — 
VOL. II. 11 


162 


THE PARISIANS. 


the President paused a second or two, as if with suppressed 
emotion — and every one present held his breath, till, in a 
deeper voice, through which there ran a quiver that thrilled 
through the hall, he concluded with — ‘ France is with you ; 
France places the cause of liberty under the protection of 
your dynasty and the great bodies of the State.’ Is France 
with him? I know not; but if the malcontents of France 
had been in the hall at that moment, I believe they would 
have felt the power of that wonderful sympathy which com- 
pels all the hearts in great audiences to beat in accord, and 
would have answered, ‘ It is true.’ 

“ All eyes now fixed on the Emperor, and I noticed few 
eyes which were not moist with tears. You know that calm 
uurevealing face of his — a face which sometimes disappoints 
expectation. But there is that in it which I have seen in no 
other, but which I can imagine to have been common to the 
Homans of old, the dignity which arises from self-control — 
an expression which seems removed from the elation of joy, 
the depression of sorrow — not unbecoming to one who has 
known great vicissitudes of Fortune and is prepared alike for 
her frowns or her smiles. 

“ I had looked at that face while M. Schneider was reading 
the address — it moved not a muscle, it might have been a 
face of marble ; Even when at moments the words were 
drowned in applause, and the Empress, striving at equal com- 
posure, still allowed us to see a movement of her eyelids, a 
tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, heir to his dy- 
nasty, had Fis looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly 
swallowing each word in the address, save once or twice, 
when he looked round the hall curiously and with a smile, as 
a mere child might look. He struck me as a mere child. 
Next to the Prince was one of those countenances which 
once seen are never to be forgotten — the true Napoleonic 
type, brooding, thoughtful, ominous, beautiful. But not with 


THE PARISIANS. 


163 


the serene energy that characterizes the head of the First 
Napoleon when Emperor, and wholly without the restless 
eagerness for action which is stamped in the lean outline ff 
Napoleon when First Consul ; no, — in Prince Napoleon there 
is the beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my 
heart — were I man, the intellect that would not command my 
trust. But, nevertheless, in beauty it is signal, and in that 
beauty the expression of intellect is predominant. 

“ Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing ! The Emperor 
spoke — and believe me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or 
your compatriots may insinuate, there is in that man no 
sign of declining intellect or failing health. I care not what 
may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health as 
young as Caesar when he crossed the Bubicon. 

“ The old cling to the past — they do not go forward to the 
future. There was no going back in that speech of the 
Emperor. There was something grand and something young 
in the modesty with which he put aside all reference to that 
which his Empire had done in the past, and said, with a 
simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately 
describe — 

“ ‘ We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the 
future. Who can be opposed to the progressive march of a 
regime founded by a great people in the midst of political 
disturbance, and which now is fortified by liberty ?’ 

“As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock 
with an applause that must have been heard on the other 
side of the Seine. 

“ ‘ Vwe V Emperem' P 

“ ‘ Vive T Imperatrice P 

“ ‘ Vive le Prince Imperial P — and the last cry was yet more 
prolonged than the others, as if to aflSrm the dynasty. 

“ Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of 
chivalry more splendid than the audience in that grand hall 


164 


THE PARISIANS. 


of the Louvre, To the right of the throne all the ambassa- 
dors of the civilized world in the blaze of their rich costumes 
and manifold orders. In the gallery at the left, yet more 
behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames d'honneur and 
of the great officers of State. And when the Empress rose 
to depart, certainly my fancy cannot picture a more queen- 
like image, or one that seemed more in unison with the repre- 
sentation of royal pomp and power. The very dress, of a 
color which would have been fatal to the beauty of most 
women equally fair — a deep golden color (Valerie profanely 
called it buff) — seemed so to suit the splendor of the cere- 
mony and the day ; it seemed as if that stately form stood iu 
the midst of a sunlight reflected from itself. Day seemed 
darkened when that sunlight passed away. 

“ I fear you will think I have suddenly grown servile to 
the gauds and shows of mere royalty. I ask myself if that 
be so. I think not. Surely it is u higher sense of greatness 
which has been impressed on me by the pageant of to-day : I 
feel as if there were brought vividly before me the majesty 
of France, through the representation of the ruler she has 
crowned. 

“ I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found a refuge from 
all the warring contests in which no two seem to me in agree- 
ment as to the sort of government to be established in place 
of the present. The ‘ Liberty’ clamored for by one would 
cut the throat of ‘ the Liberty’ worshiped by another. 

“ I see a thousand phantom forms of Liberty — but on'y 
one living symbol of Order — that which spoke from a throne 
to-day.” 

***>!£*** 

Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the following Mon- 
day she was present at a crowded soiree given by M. Louvier. 
Among the guests were some of the most eminent leaders of 


THE PARISIANS. 


165 


the Opposition, including that vivacious master of sharp say- 
ings, M. P , whom Savarin entitled “the French Sheri- 

dan if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be also 
the French Solon. 

There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded by the Re- 
publican party with equal admiration and distrust. For the 
distrust, he himself pleasantly accounted in talk with Savarin : 

“ How can I expect to be trusted ? I represent ‘ Common 
Sense every Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and 
cries ‘ Je suis train ’ when Common Sense is to be put into 
action.” 

A group of admiring listeners had collected round one 
(perhaps the most brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by 
whom, in France, the respect for all law has been so often 
talked away ; he was speaking of the Saturday’s ceremonial 
with eloquent indignation. It was a mockery to France to 
talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the 
Empire. 

There was a flagrant token of the military force under 
which civil freedom was held in the very dress of the Em- 
peror and his insignificant son : the first in the uniform of a 
General of Division ; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous- 
Ueutenant. Then other Liberal chiefs chimed in : “ The 
army,” said one, “ was an absurd expense ; it must be put 
down:” “The world was grown too civilized for war,” said 
another : “ The Empress was priest-ridden,” said a third : 
“ Churches m ght be tolerated ; Voltaire built a church, but 
a church simply to the God of Nature, not of priestcraft,” — 
and so on. 


166 


THE PARISIANS. 


Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, 
here turned away from the orators to whom she had before 
been listening with earnest attention, and her eyes fell on the 
countenance of De Mauleon, who was seated opposite. The 
countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scorn- 
ful ; that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mau- 
leon’s eye met her own, and, drawing his chair near to her, he 
said, smiling, “ Your look tells me that I almost frightened 
you by the ill-bred frankness with which my face must have 
betrayed my anger at hearing such imbecile twaddle from 
men who aspire to govern our turbulent France. You re- 
member that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake a 
quack advertised ‘ pills against earthquakes.’ These mes- 
sieurs are not so cunning as the quack ; he did not name the 
ingredients of his pills.” 

“ But, M. de Mauleon,” said Isaura, “ if you, being op- 
posed to the Empire, think so ill of the wisdom of those’ 
who would destroy it, are you prepared with remedies for 
earthquakes more efficacious than their pills?” 

“ I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposi- 
tion, replied to a somewhat similar question, — ‘I don’t pre- 
scribe till I’m called in.’ ” 

“ To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes 
were announced on Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with 
which the Emperor was greeted, there is too little fear of an 
earthquake for a good trade to the pills of these messieurs, or 
for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose till called in.” 

“Ah, Mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for 
politics makes me forget all about emperors and earthquakes. 


THE PARISIANS. 


167 


Pardon that commonplace compliment — remember I am a 
Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous.” 

“You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought 
not to intrude political subjects on one like you — I understand 
BO little about them — but this is my excuse, I so desii’e to 
know more.” 

M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at h^j earnestly with a 
kindly, half-compassionate look, wholly free from the imperti- 
nence of gallantry. “Young Poetess,” he said, softly, “you 
care for politics ! Happy, indeed, is he — and, whether he 
succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud should he be of 
an ambition crowned at home — ^he who has made you desire 
to know more of politics !” 

The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. How could 
she have been so self-confessed ? She made no reply, nor did 
M. de Mauleon seem to expect one; with that rare delicacy 
of high breeding which appears in France to belong to a 
former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if there 
had been no interruption to the question her words implied. 

“ You think the Empire secure — that it is menaced by no 
earthquake? You deceive yourself. The Emperor began 
with a fatal mistake, but a mistake it needs many years to 
discover. He disdained the slow natural process of adjust- 
ment between demand and supply — employer and workmen. 
He desired — no ignoble ambition — to make Paris the wonder 
of the world, the eternal monument of his reign. In so 
doing, he sought to create artificial modes of content for 
revolutionary workmen. Never has any ruler had such tender 
heed of manual labor to the disparagement of intellectual cul- 


168 


THE PARISIANS. 


ture. Paris is embellished ; Paris is the wouder of the 
world: other great towns have followed its example; they, 
too, have their rows of palaces and temples. AVell, the time 
comes when the magician can no longer give work to the 
spirits he raises ; then they must fall on him and rend : out 
of the very houses he built for the better habitation of work- 
men will flock tlj^ malcontents who cry, ‘ Down with the Em- 
pire !’ On the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous 
ceremony which announces to the Empire the vast majority 
of votes, that will be utterly useless to it except as food for 
gunpowder in the times that are at hand. Seven days before, 
on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the Faubourg du 
Temple — easily put down — you scarcely hear of it. That 
riot was not the less necessary to those who would warn the 
Empire that it is mortal. True, the riot disperses — but it is 
unpunished : riot unpunished is a revolution begun. The 
earthquake is nearer than you think ; and for that eai thquake 
what are the pills yon quacks advertise? They prate of an 
age too enlightened for war; they would mutilate the army — 
nay, disband it if they could — with Prussia next door to 
Prance. Prussia, desiring, not unreasonably, to take that place 
in the world which France now holds, will never challenge 
France ; if she did, she would be too much in the wrong to 
And a second: Prussia, knowing that she has to do with the 
vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever 
flourished a racier in the face of a spadassin — Prussia will 
make France challenge her. 

“ And how do ces messieurs deal with the French army ? 
Do they dare say to the ministers, ‘ Preform it’ ? Do they 


THE PARISIANS. 


1G9. 


dare say, ‘ Prefer .for men whose first duty it is to obey, dis- 
cipline to equality — insist on the distinction between the 
officer and the private, and never confound it — Prussian 
officers are well-educated gentlemen, see that yours are’ ? 
Oh, no ; they are democrats too stanch not to fraternize with 
an armed mob ; they content themselves with grudging an 
extra sou to the Commissariat, and winking at the millions 
fraudulently pocketed by some ‘Liberal contractor.’ Bieu 
des dieuxl France to be beaten, not as at Waterloo by hosts 
combined, lut in fair duel by a single foe ! Oh, the shame 1 
the shame ! But as the French army is now organized, beaten 
she mui>t be, if she meets the march of the German.” 

“ You appall me with your sinister predictions,” said Isaura; 
“ but, happily, there is no sign of war. M. Duplessis, who is 
in the confidence of the Emperor, told us only the other day 
that Napoleon, on learning the result of the pUhiscif.e, said, 
‘ The foreign journalists who have been insisting that the 
Empire cannot coexist with free institutions will no longer 
hint that it can be safely assailed from without.’ And more 
than ever I may say, V Empire cest lapaixV' 

Monsieur de Mauleon shrugged his shoulders. “ The old 
story — Troy and the wooden horse.” 

“ Tell me, M. de Mauleon, why do you, who so despise the 
Opposition, join with it in opposing the Empire?” 

“ Mademoiselle, the Empire opposes me ; while it lasts I 
cannot be even a Depute; when it is gone. Heaven knows 
what I may be,— perhaps Dictator One thing you may rely 
upon, that 1 would, if not Dictator myself, support any man 
who was better fitted for that task.” 

VOL. II.— H 


170 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Better fitted to destroy the liberty which he pretended to 
fight for I” 

“ Not exactly so,” replied M. de Maul^on, imperturbably — 
better fitted to establish a good government in lieu of the 
bad one he had fought against, and the much worse govern- 
ments that would seek to turn France into a madhouse and 
make the maddest of the inmates the mad doctor!” He 
turned away, and here their conversation ended. 

But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she con- 
cluded her letter to Madame de Grantmesnil by giving a 
sketch of its substance, prefaced by an ingenuous confession 
that she felt less sanguine confidence in the importance of the 
applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the Saturday’s 
ceremonial, and ending thus : “ I can but confusedly tran- 
scribe the words of this singular man, and can give you no 
notion of the manner and the voice which made them elo- 
quent. Tell me, can there be any truth in his gloomy pre- 
dictions ? I try not to think so, but they seem to rest over 
that brilliant hall of the Louvre like an ominous thunder- 
cloud.” 


CHAPTER IL 

The Marquis de Rochebriant was seated in his pleasant 
apartment, glancing carelessly at the envelopes of many notes 
and letters lying yet unopened on his breakfast-table. Ho 
had risen late at noon, for he had not gone to bed till dawn. 
The night had been spent at his club — over the card-table — ^by 


THE PARISIANS. 


171 


no means to tlie pecuniary advantage of tlie Marquis. The 
reader will have learned, through the conversation recorded 
in a former chapter between De Maul4on and Enguerrand de 
Yandemar, that the austere Seigneur Breton had become a fast 
viveur of Paris. He had long since spent the remnant of 
Louvier’s premium of £1000, and he owed a year’s interest. 
For this last there was an excuse — M. Collot, the contractor 
to whom he had been advised to sell the yearly fall of his 
forest-trees, had removed the trees, but had never paid a sou 
beyond the preliminary deposit ; so that the revenue, out of 
which the mortgagee should be paid his interest, was not 
forthcoming. Alain had instructed M. Hebert to press the 
contractor ; the contractor had replied that if not pressed he 
could soon settle all claims — if pressed, he must declare him- 
self bankrupt. The Chevalier de Finisterre had laughed at 
the alarm which Alain conceived when he first found himself 
in the condition of debtor for a sum he could not pay, 
creditor for a sum he could not recover. 

Bagatelle r said the Chevalier. “ Tschu ! Collot, if 
you give him time, is as safe as the Bank of France, and 
Louvier knows it. Louvier will not trouble you — Louvier, the 
best fellow in the world 1 I’ll call on him and explain matters.” 

It is to be presumed that the Chevalier did so explain ; for 
though both at the first, and quite recently at the second de- 
fault of payment, Alain received letters from M. Louvier’s 
professional agent, as reminders of interest due, and as re- 
quests for its payment, the Chevalier- assured him that these 
applications were formalities of convention — that Louvier, in 
fact, knew nothing about them ; and when dining with the 


172 


THE PARISIANS. 


great financier himself, and cordially welcomed and called 
^^Mon cher^'^ Alain had taken him aside and commenced ex- 
planation and excuse, Louvier had cut him short. '■^Peste! 
don't mention such trifles. There is such a thing as business 
— that concerns my agent ; such a thing as friendship — that 
concerns me. Allez P 

Thus M. de Kochebriant, confiding in debtor and in 
creditor, had suffered twelve months to glide by without 
much heed of either, and more than lived up to an income 
amply sufficient indeed for the wants of an ordinary bachelor, 
but needing more careful thrift than could well be expected from 
the head of one of the most illustrious houses in France, cast so 
young into the vortex of the most expensive capital in the world. 

The poor Marquis glided into the grooves that slant down- 
ward, much as the French Marquis of tradition was wont to 
slide ; not that he appeared to live extravagantly, but he 
needed all he had for his pocket-money, and had lost that 
dread of being in debt which he had brought up from the 
purer atmosphere of Bretagne. 

But there were some debts which, of course, a Bochebriant 
must pay — debts of honor — and Alain had, on the previous 
night, incurred such a debt, and must pay it that day. He 
had been strongly tempted, when the debt rose to the figure 
it had attained, to risk a change of luck ; but, whatever his 
imprudence, he was incapable of dishonesty. If the luck did 
not change, and he lost more, he would be without means tq 
meet his obligations. As the debt now stood, he calculated 
that he could just discharge it by the sale of his conp6 and 
horses. It is no wonder he left his letters unopened, how- 


THE PARISIANS. 


173 


ever charming they miglit be ; he was quite sure they would 
contain no check which would enable him to pay his debt 
and retain his equipage. 

The door opened, 'and the valet announced M. le Chevalier 
de Fiuisterre — a man with smooth countenance and air dis- 
tingue, a pleasant voice and perpetual smile. 

“’Well, mon cher,'^ cried the Chevalier, “I hope that you 
recovered the favor of Fortune before you quitted her green 
table last night. When I left she seemed very cross with you.” 

“ And so continued to the end,” answered Alain, with well- 
simulated gayety — much too hon gentilUomme to betray rage 
or anguish for pecuniary loss. / 

. “ After all,” said De Finisterre, lighting his cigarette, “ the 

uncertain goddess could not do you much harm ; the stakes 
were small, and your adversary, the Prince, never goes double 
or quits.” 

“Nor I either.’ ‘ Small,” however, is a word of relative 
import *, the stakes might be small to you, to me large. Entre 
nous, cher ami, I am at the end of my purse, and I have only 
this consolation — I am cured of play; not that I leave the 
complaint, the complaint leaves me ; it can no more feed on 
me than a fever can feed on a skeleton.” 

• “ Are you serious ?” 

“ As serious as a mourner who has just buried his all.” 

“ His' all ? Tut, with such an estate as Ilochebriant !” 

For the first time in that talk, Alain’s countenance became 
overcast. 

“ And how long will Kochebriant be mine ? You know 
that I hold it at the mercy of the mortgagee, whose interest 


174 


THE PARISIANS. 


has not been paid, and who could, if he so pleased, issue notice^ 
take proceedings — that — ^ — ” 

“ Peste r interrupted De Finisterre ; “ Louvier take pro- 
ceedings ! Louvier, the best fellow in the world ! But don’t 
I see his handwriting on that envelope ? No doubt an invita- 
tion to dinner.” 

Alain took up the letter thus singled forth from a miscel- 
lany of epistles, some in female handwritings, unsealed, but 
ingeniously twisted into Gordian knots — some also in female 
handwritings, carefully sealed — others in ill-looking envelopes, 
addressed in bold, legible, clerk-like calligraphy. Taken alto- 
gether, these epistles had a character in common : they be- 
tokened the correspondence of a viveur^ regarded from the 
female side as young, handsome, well-born ; on the male side, 
as a viveur who had forgotten to pay his hosier and tailor. 

Louvier wrote a small, not very intelligible, but very mascu- 
line hand, as most men who think cautiously and act promptly 
do write. The letter ran thus : — 

'‘‘‘Cher petU Marquis^' (at that commencement Alain 
haughtily raised his head and bit his lips), — Cher petit Mar^ 
quis — It is an age since I have seen you. No doubt my 
humble soirees are too dull for a beau seigneur so courted. 
I forgive you. Would I were a beau seigneur at your age I 
Alas ! I am only a commonplace man of business, growing 
old, too aloft from the world in which I dwell. You can 
scarcely but be aware that I have embarked a great part 
of my capital in building speculations. There is a Rue de 
Louvier that runs its drains right through my purse. I 
am obliged to call in the moneys due to me. My agent 
informs me that I am just 7000 louis short of the total I 


THE PARISIANS. 


175 


need — all other debts being paid in — and that there is a 
trifle more than 7000 louis owed to me as interest on my 
liypotheque on Rochebriant ; kindly pay into his hands, before 
the end of this week, that sum. You have been too lenient to 
Collot, who must owe you more than that. Send agent to 
him. DesoU to trouble you, and am au desespoir to think 
that my own pressing necessities compel me to urge you to 
take so much trouble. Mais que faire f The Rue de Louvier 
stops the way, and I must leave it to my agent to clear it. 

“ Accept all my excuses, with the assurance of my senti- 
ments the most cordial. Paul Louvier.” 

Alain tossed the letter to De Finisterre. “ Read that from 
the best fellow in the world.” 

The Chevalier laid down his cigarette and read. “ Diahle /” 
he said, when he returned the letter and resumed the cigarette, 
— “ Diahle I Louvier must be much pressed for money, or he 
would not have written in this strain. What does it matter ? 
Collot owes you more than 7000 louis. Let your lawyer 
get them, and go to sleep with both ears on your pillow.” 

“ Ah ! you think Collot can pay if he will ?” 

“ Ma foi I did not M. Gandrin tell you that M. Collot was 
safe to buy your wood at more money than any one else 
would give ?” 

“ Certainly,” said Alain, comforted. “ Gandrin left that 
impression on my mind. I will set him on the man. All 
will come right, I daresay ; but if it does not come right, 
what would Louvier do ?” 

“Louvier do!” answered Finisterre, reflectively. “Well, 
do you ask my opinion and advice ?” 

“ Earnestly, I ask.” 


176 


THE PARISIANS. 


. “ Honestly, then, I answer. I am a little on the Bourse 
myself — most Parisians are. Louvier has made a gigantic 
speculation in this new street, and with so many other irons 
in the fire he must want all the money he can get at. I dare- 
say that if you do not pay him what you owe, he must leave 
it to his agent to take steps for announcing the sale of Boche- 
briant. But he detests scandal ; he hates the notion of being 
severe ; rather than that, in spite of his difficulties, he will buy 
Bochebriant of you at a better price than it can command at 
public sale. Sell it to him. Appeal to him to act gener- 
ously, and you will flatter him. You will get more than the 
old place is worth. Invest the surplus — live as you have 
done, or better — and marry an heiress. Morhleu ! a Marquis 
de Bochebriant, if he were sixty years old, would rank high 
in the matrimonial market. The more the democrats have 
sought to impoverish titles and laugh down historical names, 
the more do rich democrat fathers-in-law seek to decorate 
their daughters with titles and give their grandchildren the 
heritage of historical names. You look shocked, pauvre ami. 
Let us hope, then, that Collot will pay. Set your dog — I 
mean your lawyer — at him ; seize him by the throat !” 

Before Alain had recovered from the stately silence with 
which he had heard this very practical counsel, the valet again 
appeared, and ushered in M. Frederic Lemercier. 

There was no cordial acquaintance between the visitors. 
Lemercier was chafed at finding himself supplanted in Alain s 
intimate companionship by so new a friend, and De Finis- 
terre affected to regard Lemercier as a would-be exquisite of 
low birth and bad taste. 


THE PARISIANS. 


177 


Alain, too, was a little discomposed at the sight of Lemer- 
cier, remembering the wise cautions which that old college 
friend had wasted on him at the commencement of his Pa- 
risian career, and smitten with vain remorse that the cautions 
had been so arrogantly slighted. 

It was with some timidity that he extended his hand to 
Frederic, and he was surprised as well as moved by the more 
than usual warmth with which it was grasped by the friend 
he had long neglected. Such affectionate greeting was 
scarcely in keeping with the pride which characterized Fred- 
eric Lemercier. 

“ Ma foil" said the Chevalier, glancing towards the clock, 
“ how time flies ! I had no idea it was so late. I must leave 
you now, my dear Rochebriant. Perhaps we shall meet at 
the club later — I dine there to-day. Au plaisir, M. Le- 
mercier.” 


CHAPTER III. 

When the door had closed on the Chevalier, Frederic’s 
countenance became very grave. Drawing his chair near to 
Alain, he said, “ We have not seen much of each other 
lately, — nay, no excuses; I am well aware that it could 
scarcely be otherwise. Paris has grown so large and so sub- 
divided into sets, that the best friends belonging to different 
sets become as divided as if the Atlantic flowed betwc^en 
them. I come to-day in consequence of something I have 

H* 12 


178 


THE PARISIANS. 


just heard from Duplessis. Tell me, have you got the money 
for the wood you sold to M. Collot a year ago ?” 

“ No,” said Alain, falteringly. 

“ Good heavens ! none of it ?” 

“ Only the deposit of ten per cent., which of course I spent, 
for it formed the greater part of my income. What of Col- 
lot ? Is he really unsafe ?” 

“ He is ruined, and has fled the country. His flight was 
the talk of the Bourse this morning. Duplessis told me of it,” 

Alain’s face paled. “ How is Louvier to be paid ? Read 
that letter !” 

Lemercier rapidly scanned his eye over the contents of 
Louvier’s letter. 

“ It is true, then, that you owe this man a year’s interest 
— more than 7000 louis?” 

“ Somewhat more — yes. But that is not the first care that 
troubles me — Rochebriant may be lost, but with it not my 
honor. I owe the Russian Prince 300 louis, lost to him last 
night at ecartL I must find a purchaser for my and 

horses ; they cost me 600 louis last year, — do you know any 
one who will give me three ?” 

“ Pooh ! I will give you six ; your alezan alone is worth 
half the money !” 

“ My dear Prederic, I will not sell them to you on any 
account. But you have so many friends ’ ’ 

“ Who would give their soul to say, ‘ I bought these horses 
of Rochebriant.’ Of course I have. Ha ! young Rameau — 
you are acquainted with him ?” 

“ Rameau ! I never heard of him !” 


THE PARISIANS. 


179 


Vanity of vanities, then what is fame ! Rameau is the 
editor of ‘ Le Sens Commun.^ You read that journal?” 

“Yes, it has clever articles, and I remember how I was ab- 
sorbed in the eloquent roman which appeared in it.” 

“ Ah ! by the Signora Cicogna, with whom I think you 
were somewhat smitten last year.” 

“ Last year — was I ? How a year can alter a man ! But 
my debt to the Prince. What has '■Le Sens Commun' to do 
with my hors^ ?” 

“ I met Rameau at Savarin’s the other evening. He was 
making himself out a hero and a martyr ; his coupe had been 
taken from him to assist in a barricade in that senseless emeute 
ten days ago, the ccmpi got smashed, the horses disappeared. 
He will buy one of your horses and coupS. Leave it to me. 
I know where to dispose of the other two horses. At what 
hour do you want the money?” 

“ Before I go to dinner at the club.” 

“You shall have it within two hours ; but you must not 
dine at the club to-day. I have a note from Duplessis to 
invite you to dine with him to-day. ” 

“ Duplessis 1 I know so little of him !” 

“You should know him better. He is the only man who 
can give you sound advice as to this difficulty with Louvier, 
and he will give it the more carefully and zealously because he 
has that enmity to Louvier which one rival financier has to 
another. I dine with him too. We shall find an occasion to 
consult him quietly ; he speaks of you most kindly. What 
a lovely girl his daughter is !” 

“ I daresay. Ah ! I wish I had been less absurdly fastid- 


180 


THE PARISIANS. 


ious. I wisli I had entered the army as a private soldier six 
months ago ; I should have been a corporal by this time I 
Still it is not too late. When Rochebriant is gone, I can yet 
say with the Mousquetaire in the melodrame, ‘ I am rich — I 
have my honor and my sword !’ ” 

“ Nonsense ! Rochebriant shall be saved ; meanwhile I 
hasten to Rameau. Au revoir^ at the H6tel Duplessis — seven 
o’clock.” 

Lemercier went, and in less than two hours sent the Mar- 
quis bank-notes for 600 louis, requesting an order for the 
delivery of the horses and carriage. 

That order written and signed, Alain hastened to acquit him- 
self of his debt of honor, and, contemplating his probable ruin 
with a lighter heart, presented himself at the Hotel Duplessis. 

Duplessis made no pretensions to vie with the magnificent 
existence of Louvier. His house, though agreeably situated 
and flatteringly styled the Hotel Duplessis, was of moderate 
size, very unostentatiously furnished ; nor was it accustomed 
to receive the brilliant motley crowds which assembled in the 
salons of the elder financier. 

Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had confined such enter- 
tainments as he gave to quiet men of business, or a few of the 
more devoted and loyal partisans of the Imperial dynasty ; 
but since Valerie came to live with him he had extended his 
hospitalities to wider and livelier circles, including some ce- 
lebrities in the world of art and letters as well as of fashion. 
Of the party assembled that evening at dinner were Isaura, 
with the Signora Venosta, one of the Imperial Ministers, the 
Colonel whom Alain had already met at Lemercier’s supper. 


THE PARISIANS. 


m 


Dipritis (ardent Imperialists), and the Duchesse de Tarascon ; 
these, with Alain and Frederic, made up the party. The 
conversation was not particularly gay. Duplessis himself, 
though an exceedingly well-read and able man, had not the 
genial accomplishments of a brilliant host. Constitutionally 
grave and habitually taciturn — though there were moments in 
which he was roused out of his wonted self into eloquence o' 
wit — he seemed to-day absorbed in some engrossing train of 
thought. The Minister, the Deputes^ and the Duchesse de 
Tarascon talked politics, and ridiculed the trumpery emeute 
of the 14th; exulted in the success of the pUhiscite ; and, 
admitting ^ith indignation the growing strength of Prus- 
sia, — and with scarcely less indignation, but more contempt, 
censuring the selfish egotism of England in disregarding the 
due equilibrium of the European balance of power, — hinted 
at the necessity of annexing Belgium as a set-off against the 
results of Sadowa. 

Alain found himself seated next to Isaura — to the woman who 
had so captivated his eye and fancy on his first arrival in Paris. 

Remembering his last conversation with Graham nearly a 
year ago, he felt some curiosity to ascertain whether the rich 
Englishman had proposed to her, and, if so, been refused or 
accepted. 

The first words that passed between them were trite enough ; 
but, after a little pause in the talk, Alain said — 

“ I think Mademoiselle and myself have an acquaintance 
in common — Monsieur Yane, a distinguished Englishman. Do 
you know if he be in Paris at present? I have not seen him 
for many months.” 


182 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ I believe he is in London ; at least Colonel Morley met 
the other day a friend of his who said so.” 

Though Isaura strove to speak in a tone of indifference, 
Alain’s ear detected a ring of pain in her voice ; and, watch- 
ing her countenance, he was impressed with a saddened change 
in its expression. He was touched, and his curiosity was 
mingled with a gentler interest as he said, “ When I last 
sav M. Vane I should have judged him to be too much under 
the spell of an enchantress to remain long without the pale 
of the circle she draws around her.” 

Isaura turned her face quickly towards the speaker, and 
her lips moved, but she said nothing audibly. 

“Can there have been quarrel or misunderstanding?” 
thought Alain ; and after that question his heart asked itself, 
“ Supposing Isaura were free, her affections disengaged, could 
he wish to woo and to win her?” and his heart answered, 
“ Eighteen months ago thou wert nearer to her than now. 
Thou wert removed from her forever when thou didst accept 
the world as a barrier between you ; then, poor as thou wert, 
thou wouldst have preferred her to riches. Thou wert then 
sensible only of the ingenuous impulses of youth ; but the 
moment thou saidst, ‘ I am Rochebriant, and, having once 
owned the claims of birth and station, I cannot renounce 
them for love,’ Isaura became but a dream. Now that ruin 
stares thee in the face — now that thou must grapple with the 
sternest difficulties of adverse fate — thou hast lost the poetry 
of sentiment which could alone give to that dream the colors 
and the form of human life.” He could not again think of 
that fair creature as a prize that he might even dare to covet. 


THE Parisians. 


183 


And as he met her inquiring eyes, and saw her quivering lip, 
he felt instinctively that Graham was dear to her, and that 
the tender, interest with which she inspired himself was un- 
troubled by one pang of jealousy. He resumed : 

“ Yes, the last time I saw the Englishman he spoke with 
such respectful homage of one lady, whose hand he would 
deem it the highest reward of ambition to secure, that I can- 
not but feel deep compassion for him if that ambition has been 
foiled ; and thus only do I account for his absence from Paris.” 

“ You are an intimate friend of Mr. Vane’s?” 

“ No, indeed, I have not that honor ; our acquaintance is 
but slight, but it impressed me with the idea of a man of 
vigorous intellect, frank temper, and perfect honor.” 

Isaura’s face brightened with the joy we feel when we hear 
the praise of those we love. 

At this moment, Duplessis, who had been observing the 
Italian and the young Marquis, for the first time during 
dinner, broke silence. 

“Mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Isaura across the 
table, “ I hope I have not been correctly informed that your 
literary triumph has induced you to forego the career in which 
all the best judges concur that your successes would be no 
less brilliant ; surely one art does not exclude another.” 

Elated by Alain’s report of Graham’s words, by the con- 
viction that these words applied to herself, and by the thought 
that her renunciation of the stage removed a barrier between 
them, Isaura answered, with a sort of enthusiasm — 

“ I know not, M. Duplessis, if one art excludes another ; 
if there be desire to excel in each. But I have long lost all 


i84 


THE PARISIANS. 


desire to excel in the art you refer to, and resigned all idea of 
the career in which it opens.” 

“ So M. Vane told me,” said Alain, in a whisper. 

“When?” 

“ Last year, — on the day that he spoke in terms of admi- 
ration so merited of the lady whom M. Duplessis has just had 
the honor to address.” 

All this while, Valerie, who was seated at the farther end 
of the table beside the Minister, who had taken her in to 
dinner, had been watching, with eyes the anxious tearful sor- 
row of which none but her father had noticed, the low-voiced 
confidence between Alain and the friend whom till that day 
she had so enthusiastically loved. Hitherto she had been 
answering in monosyllables all attempts of the great man to 
draw her into conversation ; but now, observing how Isaura 
blushed and looked down, that strange faculty in women, 
which we men call dissimulation, and which in them is truth- 
fulness to their own nature, enabled her to carry off the sharp- 
est anguish she had ever experienced, by a sudden burst of 
levity of spirit. She caught up some commonplace the Min- 
ister had adapted to what he considered the poverty of her 
understanding, with a quickness of satire which startled that 
grave man, and he gazed at her astonished. Up to that mo- 
ment he had secretly admired her as a girl well brought up — 
as girls fresh from a French convent are supposed to be ; 
now, hearing her brilliant rejoinder to his stupid observation, 
he said inly, I the low birth of a financier’s daughter 

shows itself.” 

But, being a clever man himself, her retort put him on his 


THE PARISIANS. 


185 


mettle, and he became, to his own amazement, brilliant him- 
self. With that matchless quickness which belongs to Paris- 
ians, the guests around him seized the. new esprit de conversa- 
tion which had b6en evoked between the statesman and the 
childlike girl beside him ; and as they caught up the ball, 
lightly flung among them, they thought within themselves 
how much more sparkling the financier’s pretty, lively 
daughter was than that dark-eyed young muse, of whom 
all the journalists of Paris wei‘e writing in a chorus of wel- 
come and applause, and who seemed not to have a word to 
say worth listening to, excepting to the handsome young 
Marquis, whom, no doubt, she wished to fascinate. 

Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and in wit; and 
neither Valerie nor Isaura cared, to the value of a bean-straw, 
about that distinction. Each was thinking only of the prize 
which the humblest peasant women have in common with the 
most brilliantly accomplished of their sex — the heart of a 
man beloved. 


CHAPTEll IV. 

On the Continent generally, as we all know, men do not sit 
drinking wine together after the ladies retire. So when the 
signal was given all the guests adjourned to the salon; and 
Alain quitted Isaura to gain the ear of the Duchesse de 
Tarascon. 

“ It is long — at least long for Paris life,’’ said the Marquis 
—“since my first visit to you, in company with Enguerrand 


186 


THE PARISIANS. 


de Vandemar. Much that you then said rested on my mind, 
disturbing the prejudices I took from Bretagne.’ ' 

“I am proud to hear it, my kinsman.” 

“You know that I would have taken military service under 
the Emperor, but for the regulation which would have com- 
pelled me to enter the ranks as a private soldier.” 

“ I sympathize with that scruple ; but you are aware that 
the Emperor himself could not have ventured to make an 
exception even in your favor.” 

“ Certainly not. I repent me of my pride ; perhaps I may 
enlist still in some regiment sent to Algiers.” 

“No, there are other ways in which a Bochebriant can 
serve a throne. There will be an office at Court vacant soon, 
which would not misbecome your birth.” 

“ Pardon me ; a soldier serves his country — a courtier 
owns a master ; and I cannot take the livery of the Emperor, 
though I could wear the uniform of France.” 

“ Your distinction is childish, my kinsman,” said the Buch- 
esse, impetuously. “ You talk as if the Emperor had an 
interest apart from the nation. I tell you that he has not a 
corner of his heart — not even one reserved for his son and 
his dynasty — in which the thought of France does not pre- 
dominate.” 

“ I do not presume, Madame la Duchesse, to question the 
truth of what you say ; but I have no reason to suppose that 
the same thought does not predominate in the heart of the 
Bourbon. The Bourbon would be the first to say to me, ‘ If 
France needs your sword against her foes, let it not rest in 
the scabbard.’ But would the Bourbon say, ‘ The place of a 


THE PARISIANS. 


187 


Rochebriant is among tbe valetaille of tbe Corsican’s s'lc- 
cessor’ ?” 

“ Alas for poor France,” said the Duchesse, “ and alas for 
men like you, my proud cousin, if the Corsican’s successors 
or successor be ” 

“ Henry V.?” interrupted Alain, with a brightening eye. 

“ Dreamer I No ; some descendant of the mob-kings who 
gave Bourbons and nobles to the guillotine.” 

While the Duchesse and Alain were thus conversing, Isaura 
had seated herself by Val4rie, and, unconscious of the offense 
she had given, addressed her in those pretty caressing terms 
with which young lady friends are wont to compliment each 
other; but Valerie answered curtly or sarcastically, and turned 
aside to converse with the Minister. A few minutes more, 
and the party began to break up. Lemercier, however, de- 
tained Alain, whispering, “ Duplessis will see us on your 
business so soon as the other guests have gone.” 


CHAPTER y. 

“Monsieur le Marquis,” said Duplessis, when the sahn 
was cleared of all but himself and the two friends, “ Lemercier 
has confided to me the state of your affairs in connection with 
M. Louvier, and flatters me by thinking my advice may be 
of some service; if so, command me.” 

“ I shall most gratefully accept your advice,” answered Alain, 
but I fear my condition defies even your ability and skill.” 


188 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Permit me to hope not, and to ask a few necessary qucs* 
tions. M. Louvier has constituted himself your sole mort- 
gagee; to what amount, at what interest, and from what 
annual proceeds is the interest paid ?” 

Herewith Alain gave details already furnished to the 
reader. Duplessis listened, and noted down the replies. 

“ I see it all,” he said, when Alain had finished. “ M. 
Louvier had predetermined to possess himself of your estate : 
he makes himself sole mortgagee at a rate of interest so low 
that, I tell you fairly, at the present value of money, I doubt 
if you could find any capitalist who would accept the transfer 
of the mortgage at the same rate. This is not like Louvier, 
unless he had an object to gain ; and that object is your land. 
The revenue from your estate is derived chiefly from wood^ 
out of which the interest due to Louvier is to be paid. M. 
Gandrin, in a skillfully-guarded letter, encourages you to sell 
the wood from your forests to a man who offers you several 
thousand francs more than it could command from customary 
buyers. I say nothing against M. Gandrin, but every man 
who knows Paris as I do knows that M. Louvier can put, 
and has put, a great deal of money into M. Gandrin’s pocket. 
The purchaser of your wood does not pay more than his de- 
posit, and has just left the country insolvent. Your purchaser, 
M. Collot, was an adventurous speculator ; he would have 
bought anything at any price, provided he had time to pay ; 
if his speculations had been lucky he would have paid. M. 
Louvier knew, as I knew, that M. Collot was a gambler, and 
the chances were that he would not pay. M. Louvier alldws 
a year’s interest on his hypotlieque to become due^ — -notice 


THE PARISIANS. 


189 ' 


thereof duly given to' you by his agent — now you come under 
the operation of‘ the law. Of course you know what the 
law is.” ’ ' . 

“ Not exactly,” answered Alain, feeling frost-bitten by the 
congealing words of his counselor ; “ but I take it for gi’anted 
that if I cannot pay the. interest of a sum borrowed on my 
property, that property itself is forfeited.” 

“No, not quite that — the law is ^ mild. If the interest 
which should be paid half-yearly remains unpaid at the end 
of a year, the mortgagee has a right to be impatient, has 
he not?” 

“ Certainly he has.” ’ , h 

“ Well, then, on faitun commandenient tendant d same im- 
mohiliere, viz. : The mortgagee gives a notice that the prop- 
erty shall be put up for sale. Then it is put up for sale, and 
in most cases the mortgagee buys it in. Here, certainly, no 
competitors in the mere business- way would vie with Louvier j 
the mortgage at three and a half per cent, covers more than 
the estate is apparently worth. Ah ! but stop, M. le Marquis ; 
the notice is not yet served : the whole process would take 
six months from the day it is served to the taking’ possession 
after the sale ; in the mean while, if you pay the interest due, 
the action ' drops. Courage, M. le Marquis! Hope yet, if 
you condescend to call me friend.” 

“ And me,” cried Lemercier; “ I will sell out of my railway 
shades to-morrow— see to it,* Duplessis — enough to pay off, 
the damnable interest. See to it, monamC’ .it it 

“ Agree to that, M. le Marquis, and you are safe for another 
year,”- said Duplessis, 'folding up the paper on which he had 


190 


THE PARISIANS. 


made his notes, but fixing on Alain quiet eyes half concealed 
under dropping lids. 

“Agree to that!” cried Rochebriant, rising — “agree to 
allow even my worst enemy to pay for me moneys I could 
never hope to repay — agree to allow the oldest and most con- 
fiding of my friends to do so — M. Duplessis, never ! If I 
carried the porter’s knot of an Auvergnat, I should still 
remain gentilhomnie and Breton^ 

Duplessis, habitually the driest of men, rose with a moist- 
ened eye and flushing cheek. “ Monsieur le Marquis, vouch- 
safe me the honor to shake hands with you. I too am by 
descent gentilhomme^ by profession a speculator on the Bourse. 
In both capacities I approve the sentiment you have uttered. 
Certainly, if our friend Frederic lent you 7000 louis or so 
this year, it would be impossible for you even to foresee 
the year in which you could repay it ; but” — here Duplessis 
paused a minute, and then, lowering the tone of his voice, 
which had been somewhat vehement and enthusiastic, into 
that of a colloquial good-fellowship, equally rare to the meas- 
ured reserve of the financier, he asked, with a lively twinkle 
of his gray eye, “ Did you never hear. Marquis, of a little 
encounter between me and M. Louvier ?” 

“Encounter at arms — does Louvier fight?” asked Alain, 
innocently. 

“ In his own way he is always fighting ; but I speak meta- 
phorically. You see this small house of mine — so pinched in 
by the houses next to it that I can neither get space for a 
ball-room for Valerie, nor a dining-room for more than a 
friendly party like that which has honored me to-day. Eh 


THE PARISIANS. 


191 


him ! I bought this house a few years ago, meaning to buy 
the one next to it and throw the two into one. I went to 
the proprietor of the next house, who, as I knew, wished to 
sell. ‘Aha,’ he thought, ‘this is the rich Monsieur Du- 
plessis;’ and he asked me 2000 louis more than the house 
was worth. We men of business cannot bear to be too 
much cheated ; a little cheating we submit to — much cheat- 
ing raises our gdl. Bref - — this was on Monday. I offered 
the man 1000 louis above the fair price, and gave him 
till Thursday to decide. Somehow or other Louvier hears of 
this. ‘ Hillo !’ says Louvier, ‘ here is a financier who desires 
a Jidtel to vie with mine !’ He goes on Wednesday to my 
next-door neighbor. ‘Friend, you want to sell your house. I 
want to buy — the price?’ The proprietor, who does not 
know him by sight, says, ‘ It is as good as sold. M. Du- 
plessis and I shall agree.’ ‘ Bah ! What sum did you 
ask M. Duplessis?’ He names the sum; 2000 louis more 
than he can get elsewhere. ‘ But M. Duplessis will give me 
the sum.’ ‘You asked too little. I will give you 3000. 
A fig for M. Duplessis! I am Monsieur Louvier.’ So 
when I call on Thursday the house is sold. I reconciled 
myself easily enough to the loss of space for a larger dining- 
room ; but, though Valerie was then a child at a convent, I 
was sadly disconcerted by the thought that I could have no 
salh de hal ready for her when she came to reside with me. 
Well, I say to myself, patience; I o^e M. Louvier a good 
turn ; my time to pay him off will come. It does come, and 
very soon. M. Louvier buys an estate near Paris— builds a 
superb villa. Close to his property is a rising forest grc und 


192 


THE PARISIANS. 


for sale. He goes to the proprietor: says the proprietor 
to himself, ‘ The great Louvier wants this,’ and adds 5000 
louis to its market price. Louvier, like myself, can’t bear 
to be cheated egregiously. Louvier offers 2000 louis more 
than the man could fairly get, and leaves him till Satur- 
day to consider. I hear of this— speculators hear of every- 
thing. On Friday night I go to the man and I give him 
60C0 louis, where he had asked 5000. Fancy Louvier’s 
face the next day ! But there my revenge only begins,” 
continued Duplessis, chuckling inwardly. “ My forest looks 
down on the villa he is building. I only wait till his villa is 
built, in order to send to my architect and say. Build me a 
villa at least twice as grand as M. Louvier’s, then clear away 
the forest trees, so that every morning he may see my palace 
dwarfing into insignificance his own.” 

“ Bravo !” cried Lemercier, clapping his hands. Lemercier 
had the spirit of party, and felt for Duplessis against Louvier 
much as in England Whig feels against Tory, or vice versa. 

“ Perhaps now,” resumed Duplessis more soberly, — “ per- 
haps now, M. le Marquis, you may understand why I humili- 
ate you by no sense of obligation if I say that M. Louvier 
shall not be the Seigneur de Bochebriant if I can help it. 
Give me a line of introduction to your Breton lawyer and to 
Mademoiselle your aunt — let me have your letters early to- 
morrow. I will take the afternoon train. I know not how 
many days I may be absent, but I shall not return till I 
have carefully examined the nature and conditions of your 
property. If I see my way to save your estate and give a 
fTMuvais quart d'heure to Louvier, so much the better for 


THE PARISIANS. 


193 


you, M. le Marquis ; if I cannot, I will say frankly, ‘ Make 
the best terms you can with your creditor.” 

“ Nothing can be more delicately generous than the way 
you put it,” said Alain ; “ but pardon me if I say that the 
pleasantry with which you narrate your grudge against M. 
Iiouvier does not answer its purpose in diminishing my sense 
of obligation.” So, linking his arm in Lemercier’s, Alain 
made his bow and withdrew. 

When his guests had gone, Duplessis remained seated in 
meditation — apparently pleasant meditation, for he smiled 
while indulging it ; he then passed through the reception- 
rooms to one at the far end, appropriated to Valerie as a 
boudoir or morning-room, adjoining her bed-chamber ; he 
knocked gently at the door, and, all remaining silent within, 
he opened it noiselessly and entered. Valerie was reclining 
on the sofa near the window — her head droopingj her hands 
clasped on her knees. Duplessis neared her with tender 
stealthy steps, passed his arm round her, and drew her head 
towards his bosom. “ Child !” he murmured ; “my child ! 
my only one I” 

At that soft loving voice, Valerie flung her arms round 
him, and wept aloud like an infant in trouble. He seated 
himself beside her, and wisely sufiered her to weep on till 
her passion had exhausted itself ; he then said, half fondly, 
half chidingly, “Have you forgotten our conversation only 
three days ago ? Have you forgotten that I then drew forth 
the secret of your heart ? Have you forgotten what I prom- 
ised you in return for your confidence ? and a promise to you 
have I ever yet broken?” 

VOL. II.— I 


13 


194 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Father ! father ! I am so wretched, and so ashamed of 
myself for being wretched I Forgive me. No, I do not 
forget your promise ; but who can promise to dispose of the 
heart of another? and that heart will never be mine. But 
bear with me a little ; I shall soon recover.” 

“ Valerie, when I made you the promise you now think I 
cannot keep, I spoke only from that conviction of power to 
promote the happiness of a child which nature implants in 
the heart of parents ; and it may be also from the experience 
of my own strength of will, since that which I have willed I 
have always won. Now I speak on yet surer ground. Be- 
fore the year is out you shall be the beloved wife of Alain de 
Bochebriant. Dry your tears, and smile on me, Valerie. If 
you will not see in me mother and father both, I have double 
love for you, motherless child of her who shared the poverty 
of my youth and did not live to enjoy the wealth which I 
hold as a trust for that heir to mine all which she left 
me.” 

As this man thus spoke, you would scarcely have recog- 
nized in him the cold saturnine Duplessis, his countenance 
became so beautified by the one soft feeling which care and 
contest, ambition and money-seeking, had left unaltered in hia 
heart. Perhaps there is no country in which the love of 
parent and child, especially of father and daughter, is so 
strong as it is in France ; even in the most arid soil, amono- 
the avaricious, even among the profligate, it forces itself into 
flower. Other loves fade away; in the heart of the true 
Frenchman that parent love blooms to the last. 

Valerie felt the presence of that love as a divine protect- 


THE PARISIANS. 


195 


ing guardianship. She sank on her knees and covered his 
hand with grateful kisses. 

“ Do not torture yourself, my child, with jealous fears of 
the fair Italian. Her lot and Alain de Rochebriant’s can 
never unite; and, whatever you may think of their whis- 
pered converse, Alain’s heart, at this moment, is too filled 
with anxious troubles to leave one spot in it accessible even 
to a frivolous gallantry. It is for us to remove these troubles ; 
and then, when he turns his eyes towards you, it will be with 
the gaze of one who beholds his happiness. You do not 
weep now, Valerie I” 



BOOIC IX. 


CHAPTEK 1. 

On waking some morning, have you ever felt, reader, as if 
a change for the brighter in the world, without and within 
you, had suddenly come to pass — some new glory has been 
given to the sunshine, some fresh balm to the air — you feel 
younger, and happier, and lighter, in the very beat of your 
heart — you almost fancy you hear the chime of some spiritual 
music far off, as if in the deeps of heaven ? You are not at 
first conscious how, or wherefore, this change has been brought 
about. Is it the effect of a dream in the gone sleep, that has 
made this morning so different from morning's that have 
dawned before? And while vaguely asking yourself that 
question, you become aware that the cause is no mere illusion, 
that it has its substance in words spoken by living lips, in 
things that belong to the work-day world. 

It was thus that Isaura woke the morning after the conver- 
sation with Alain de Rochebriant, and as certain words, then 
spoken, echoed back on her ear, she knew why she was so 
happy, why the world was so changed. 

In those words she heard the voice of Graham Yane — no ! 
she had not deceived herself — she was loved ! she was loved ! 
What mattered that long cold interval of absence ? She had 
not forgotten — she could not believe that absence had brought 
196 


THE PARISIANS. 


197 


forgetfulness. There are moments when we insist on judging 
another’s heart by our own. All would be explained some 
day — all would come right. 

How lovely was the face that reflected itself in the glass as 
she stood before it smoothing back her long hair, murmuring 
sweet snatches of Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter 
love-thoughts as she sang ! All that had passed in that year 
so critical to her outer life — the authorship, the fame, the 
public career, the popular praise — vanished from her mind as 
a vapor that rolls from the face of a lake to which the sun- 
light restores the smile of a brightened heaven. 

She was more the girl now than she had ever been since 
the day on which she sat reading Tasso on the craggy shore 
of Sorrento. 

Singing still as she passed from her chamber, and entering 
the sitting-room, which fronted the east and seemed bathed 
in the sunbeams of deepening May, she took her bird from 
its cage, and stopped her song to cover it with kisses, which 
perhaps yearned for vent somewhere. 

Later in the day she went out to visit Yalerie. Recalling 
the altered manner of her young friend, her sweet nature be- 
came troubled. She divined that Valerie had conceived some 
jealous pain, which she longed to heal ; she could not bear 
the thought of leaving any one that day unhappy. Ignorant 
before of the girl’s feelings towards Alain, she now partly 
guessed them — one woman who loves in secret is clairvoyante 
as to such secrets in another. 

Valerie received her visitor with a coldness she did not 
attempt to disguise. Not seeming^to notice this, Isaura com- 


198 


THE PARISIANS. 


menced the conversation with frank mention of Rochehriant. 
“ I have to thank you so much, dear Valerie, for a pleasure 
you could not anticipate — that of talking about an absent 
friend, and hearing the praise he deserved from one so capable 
of appreciating excellence as M. de Rochebriant appears to be.” 

“ You were talking to M. de Rochebriant of an absent 
friend — ah ! you seemed indeed very much interested in the 
conversation ” 

“ Do not wonder at that, Valerie; and do not grudge me 
the happiest moments I have known for months.” 

“ In talking with M. de Rochebriant I No doubt. Made- 
moiselle Cicogna, you found him very charming.” 

To her surprise and indignation, Valerie here felt the arm 
of Isaura tenderly entwining her waist, and her face drawn 
towards Isaura’s sisterly kiss. 

“ Listen to me, naughty child — listen and believe. M. de 
Rochebriant can never be charming to me — never touch a 
chord in my heart or my fancy, except as friend to another, 
or — kiss me in your turn, Valerie — as suitor to yourself.” 

Valerie here drew back her pretty childlike head, gazed 
keenly a moment into Isaura’s eyes, felt convinced by the 
limpid candor of. their unmistakable honesty, and, flinging 
herself on her friend’s bosom, kissed her passionately, and 
hurst into tears. 

The complete reconciliation between the two girls was thus 
peacefully effected ; and then Isaura had to listen, at no 
small length, to the confidences poured into her ears by Valerie, 
who was fortunately too engrossed by her own hopes and 
doubts to exact confidences in return. Val4rie’s was one of 


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199 


those impulsive eager natures that long for a confidante. 
Not so Isaura’s. Only when Valerie had unburdened her 
heart, and been soothed and caressed into happy trust in the 
future, did she recall Isaura’s explanatory words, and say, 
archly, “ And your absent friend ? Tell me about him. Is 
he as handsome as Alain ?” 

“ Nay,” said Isaura, rising to take up the mantle and hat 
she had laid aside on entering, “ they say that the color of a 
flower is in our vision, not in the leaves.” Then, with a grave 
melancholy in the look she fixed upon Valerie, she added, 
“ Rather than distrust of me should occasion you pain, I have 
pained myself, in making clear to you the reason why I felt 
interest in M. de Rochebriant’s conversation. In turn, I ask 
of you a favor — do not on this point question me further. 
There are some things in our past which influence the present, 
but to which we dare not assign a future — on which we can- 
not talk to another. What soothsayer can tell us if the dream 
of a yesterday will be renewed on the night of a morrow ? 
All is said — we trust one another, dearest.” 


CHAPTER 11. 

That evening the Morleys looked in at Isaura’s on their 
way to a crowded assembly at the house of one of those rich 
Americans who were then outvying the English residents at 
Paris in the good graces of Parisian society. I think the Ameri- 
cans get on better with the French than the English do — I 


200 


THE PARISIANS. 


mean the higher class of Americans. They spend more 
money; their men speak French better; the women are 
better dressed, and, as a general rule, have read more largely 
and converse more frankly. 

Mrs. Morley’s affection for Isaura had increased during the 
last few months. As so notable an advocate of the ascend- 
ency of her sex, she felt a sort of grateful pride in the accom- 
plishments and growing renown of so youthful a member of 
the oppressed sisterhood. But, apart from that sentiment, 
she had conceived a tender mother-like interest for the girl 
who stood in the world so utterly devoid of family ties, so 
destitute of that household guardianship and protection which, 
with all her assertion of the strength and dignity of woman, 
and all her opinions as to woman’s right of absolute emanci- 
pation from the conventions fabricated by the selfishness of 
man, Mrs. Morley was too sensible not to value for the indi- 
vidual, though she deemed it not needed for the mass. Her 
great desire was that Isaura should many well, and soon. 
American women usually marry so young, that it seemed to 
Mrs. Morley an anomaly in social life that one so gifted in 
mind and person as Isaura should already have passed the age 
in which the belles of the great Bepublic are enthroned as 
wives and consecrated as mothers. 

We have seen that in the past year she had selected 
from our unworthy but necessary sex Graham Vane as a 
suitable spouse to her young friend. She had divined the 
state of his heart — she had more than suspicions of the state 
of Isaura’s. She was exceedingly perplexed and exceedingly 
chafed at the Englishman’s strange disregard to his happi- 


THE PARISIANS. 


201 


ness and her own projects. She had counted, all this past 
winter, on his return to Paris ; and she became convinced 
that some misunderstanding, possibly some lovers’ quarrel, 
was the cause of his protracted absence, and a cause that, 
if ascertiftned, could be removed. A good opportunity now 
presented itself — Colonel Morley was going to London the 
next day. He had business there which would detain him at 
least a week. He would see Graham ; and as she considered 
her husband the shrewdest and wisest person in the world — 
I mean of the male sex — she had no doubt of his being able 
to turn Graham’s mind thoroughly inside out, and ascertain 
his exact feelings, views, and intentions. If the Englishman, 
thus essayed, were found of base metal, then, at least, Mrs. 
Morley would be free to cast him altogether aside and coin 
for the uses of the matrimonial market some nobler effigy in 
purer gold. 

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Morley, in low voice, nestling 
herself close to Isaura, while the Colonel, duly instructed, 
drew off the Venosta, “ have you heard anything lately of our 
pleasant friend Mr.. Vane?” 

You can guess with what artful design Mrs. Morley put 
that question point-blank, fixing keen eyes on Isaura while 
she put it. She saw the heightened color, the quivering lip, 
of the girl thus abruptly appealed to, and she said, inly, “ I 
was right — she loves him !” 

“ I heard of Mr. Vane last night — accidentally.” 

“Is he coming to Paris soon ?” 

“ Not that I know of. How charmingly that wreath be- 
comes you ! it suits the ear-rings so well, too.” 

I* 


202 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Frank ckose it ; he has good taste for a man. I trust 
him with my commissions to Hunt and RoskelFs, but I limit 
him as to price, he is so extravagant — ^men are, when they make 
presents. They seem to think we value things according to 
their cost. They would gorge us with jewels, and let us 
starve for want of a smile. Not that Frank is so bad as the 
rest of them. But d propos of Mr. Yane — Frank will be 
sure to see him, and scold him well for deserting us all. I 
should not be surprised if he brought the deserter back with 
him, for I sent a little note by Frank, inviting him to pay us 
a visit. We have spare rooms in our apartments.” 

Isaura’s heart heaved beneath her robe ; but she replied, 
in a tone of astonishing indifference, “ I believe this is the 
height of the London season ; and Mr. Vane would probably 
he too engaged to profit even by an invitation so tempting.” 

“iVbws verrons. How pleased he will be to hear of your 
triumphs ! He admired you so much before you were famous: 
what will be h:s admiration now ! Men are so vain — they 
care for us so much more when people praise us. But, till 
we have put the creatures in their proper place, we must take 
them for what they are.” 

Here the Venosta, with whom the poor Colonel had ex- 
hausted all the arts at his command for chaining her atten- 
tion, could be no longer withheld from approaching Mrs. 
Morloy and venting her admiration of that lady’s wreath, 
ear-rings, robes, flounces. This dazzling apparition had on 
her the effect which a candle has on a moth — she fluttered 
round it and longed to absorb herself in its blaze. But the 
wreath especially fascinated her — a wreath which no prudent 


THE PARISIANS. 


203 


lady with colorings less pure and features less exquisitely deli- 
cate than the pretty champion of the rights of women, could 
have fancied on her own brows without a shudder. But the 
Venosta in such matters was not prudent. “It can’t be 
dear,” she cried, piteously, extending her arms towards Isaura. 
“ I must have one exactly like it. Who made it ? Cara 
signora^ give me the address.” 

“ Ask the Colonel, dear Madame ; he chose and bought 
it.” And Mrs. Morley glanced significantly at her well- 
tutored Frank. 

“ Madame,” said the Colonel, speaking in English, which 
he usually did with the Venosta — who valued herself on 
knowing that language, and was flattered to be addressed in 
it — while he amused himself by introducing into its forma 
the dainty Americanisms with which he puzzled the Britisher 
— ^he might well puzzle the Florentine, — “ Madame, I am too 
anxious for the appearance of my wife to submit to the test 
of a rival screamer like yourself in the same apparel. With 
all the homage due to a sex of which I am enthused dreadful, 
I decline to designate the florist from whom I purchased Mrs. 
Morley’s head-fixings.” 

“ Wicked man !” cried the Venosta, shaking her finger at 
him coquettishly. “You are jealous ! Fie! a man should 
never be jealous of a woman’s rivalry with woman;” and 
then, with a cynicism that might have become a graybeard, 
she added, “ but of his own sex every man should be jealous 
— though of his ‘dearest friend. Isn’t it so, Colo'iiellof'' 

The Colonel looked puzzled, bowed, and made no reply. 

“ That only shows,” said Mrs. Morley, rising, “ what vil- 


204 


THE PARISIANS. 


lains tlie Colonel has the misfortune to call friends and fellow- 
men.” 

“ I fear it is time to go,” said Frank, glancing at the clock. 

In theory the most rebellious, in practice the most obedient, 
of wives, Mrs. Morley here kissed Isaura, resettled her crino- 
line, and, shaking hands with the Yenosta, retreated to the 
door. 

“ I shall have the wreath yet,” cried the Yenosta, impishly. 
“La speranza I femminob' (Hope is female). 

“Alas!” said Isaura, half mournfully, half smiling — “alas! 
do you not remember what the poet replied when asked what 
disease was most mortal ? — ‘ the hectic fever caught from the 
chill of hope.’ ” 


CHAPTER III. 

Graham Yane was musing very gloomily in his solitary 
apartment one morning, when his servant announced Colonel 
Morley. 

He received his visitor with more than the cordiality with 
which every English politician receives an American citizen. 
Graham liked the Colonel too well for what he was in himself, 
to need any national title to his esteem. After some pre- 
liminary questions and answers as to the health of Mrs. Mor- 
ley, the length of the Colonel’s stay in London, what day he 
could dine with Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, the 
Colonel took up the ball. “ We have been reckoning to see 
you at Paris, sir, for the last six months.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


205 


“ I am very mucli flattered to hear that you have thought 
of me at all ; but I am not aware of having warranted the 
expectation you so kindly express.” 

“ I guess you must have said something to my wife which 
led her to do more than expect — to reckon on your return. 
And, by the way, sir, I am charged to deliver to you this 
note from her, and to back the request it contains that you 
will avail yourself of the offer. Without summarizing the 
points, I do so.” 

Graham glanced over the note addressed to him: — 

“ Dear Mr. Vane, — Do you forget how beautiful the en- 
virons of Paris are in May and June? how charming it was 
last year at the lake of Enghien ? how gay were our little 
dinners out of doors in the garden arbors, with the Savarins 
and the fair Italian and her incomparably amusing chaperon ? 
Frank has my orders to bring you back to renew those happy 
days, while the birds are in their first song and the leaves 
are in their youngest green. I have prepared your rooms 
cliez nous — a chamber that looks out on the Champs Elysees, 
and a quiet cabinet de travail at the back, in .which you can 
read, write, or sulk undisturbed. Come, and we will again 
visit Enghien and Montmorency. Don’t talk of engage- 
ments. If man proposes, woman disposes. Hesitate not — 
obey. Your sincere little friend, 

“ Lizzy.” 

“ My dear Morley,” said Graham, with emotion, “ I cannot 
find words to thank your wife sufficiently for an invitation so 
graciously conveyed. Alas ! I cannot accept it.” 

“ Why?” asked the Colonel, dryly. 

“ I have too much to do in Loudon.” 


206 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Is that the true reason, or am I to suspicion that there is 
anything, sir, which makes you dislike a visit to Paris?” 

The Americans enjoy the reputation of being the frankest 
putters of questions whom liberty of speech has yet educated 
into les recherches de la vent6^ and certainly Colonel IMorley 
in this instance did not impair the national reputation. 

Graham Vane’s brow slightly contracted, and he bit his lip 
as if stung by a sudden pang ; but, after a moment’s pause, 
he answered, with a good-humored smile — 

“ No man who has taste enough to admire the most beauti- 
ful city and appreciate the charms of the most brilliant 
society in the world can dislike Paris.” 

“ My dear sir, I did not ask if you disliked Paris, but if 
there were anything that made you dislike coming back to it 
on a visit.” 

“ What a notion ! and what a cross-examiner you would 
have made if you had been called to the bar ! Surely, my deal 
friend, you can understand that when a man has in one place 
business which he cannot neglect, he may decline going to 
another place, whatever pleasure it would give him to do so. 
By the way, there is a great ball at one of the Ministers’ to- 
night ; you should go there, and I will point out to you all 
those English notabilities in whom Americans naturally take 

interest. I will call for you at eleven o’clock. Lord , 

who is a connection of mine, would be charmed to know you.” 

Morley hesitated ; but when Graham said, “ How your wife 
will scold you if you lose such an opportunity of telling her 

whether the Duchess of M is as beautiful as report says, 

and whether Gladstone or Disraeli seems to your phrenological 


THE PARISIANS. 


207 


science to have the finer head !” the Colonel gave in, and it 
was settled that Graham should call for him at the Langham 
Hotel. 

That matter arranged, Graham probably hoped that his 
inquisitive visitor would take leave for the present ; but the 
Colonel evinced no such intention. On the contrary, settling 
himself more at ease in his arm-chair, he said, “ If I remem- 
ber aright, you do not object to the odor of tobacco ?” 

Graham rose and presented to his visitor a cigar-box which 
he took from the mantelpiece. 

The Colonel shook his head, and withdrew from his breast- 
pocket a leather case, from which he extracted a gigantic 
regalia ; this he lighted from a gold match-box in the shape 
of a locket attached to his watch-chain, and took two or three 
preliminary pufis with his head thrown back and his eyes 
meditatively intent upon the ceiling. 

We know already that strange whim of the Colonel’s (than 
whom, if he so pleased, no man could speak purer English 
as spoken by the Britisher) to assert the dignity of the Ameri- 
can citizen by copious use of expressions and phrases familiar 
to the lips of the governing class of the great Republic — deli- 
cacies of speech which he would have carefully shunned in 
the polite circles of the Fifth Avenue in New York. Now, 
the Colonel was much too experienced a man of the world 
not to be aware that the commission with which his Lizzy 
had charged him was an exceedingly delicate one; and it 
occurred to his mother wit that the best way to acquit him- 
self of it so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving 
serious affront would be to push that whim of his into more 


208 


THE PARISIANS. 


than wonted exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedl} 
and briefly come to the point, and, should he in doing so 
appear too meddlesome, rather provoke a laugh than a frown 
— retiring from the ground with the honors due to a humorist. 
Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing 
his eyes from the ceiling, he began — 

“ You have not asked, sir, after the Signorina, or, as we 
popularly call her. Mademoiselle Cicogna.” 

“ Have I not ? I hope she is quite well, and her lively 
companion. Signora Yenosta.” 

“ They are not sick, sir, or at least were not so last night, 
when my wife and I had the pleasure to see them. Of course 
you have read Mademoiselle Cicogna’s book — a bright per- 
formance, sir, age considered.” 

“ Certainly I have read the book ; it is full of unquestion- 
able genius. Is Mademoiselle writing another ? But of course 
she is.” 

“ I am not aware of the fact, sir. It may be predicated ; 
such a mind cannot remain inactive ; and I know from M. 
Savarin and that rising young man Gustave Bameau that 
the publishers bid high for her brains considerable. Two 
translations have already appeared in our country.. Her 
fame, sir, will be world-wide. She may be another George 
Sand, or at least another Eulalie Grantmesnil.” 

Graham’s cheek became as white as the paper I write on. 
He inclined his head as in assent, but without a word. The 
Colonel continued — 

“ We ought to be very proud of her acquaintance, sir. I 
think you detected her gifts while they were yet uncon- 


THE PARISIANS. 


209 


jectured. My wife says so. You must be gratified to re- 
member that, sir — clear grit, sir, and no mistake.” 

“ I certainly more than once have said to Mrs. Morley 
that I esteemed Mademoiselle’s powers so highly that I 
hoped she would never become a stage-singer and actress. 
But this M. Bameau? You say he is a rising man. It 
struck me when at Paris that he was one of those charlatans 
with a great deal of conceit and very little information, who 
are always found in scores on the ultra-Liberal side of poli- 
tics ; possibly I was mistaken.” 

“ He is the responsible editor of ^Le Sens Commun^' in 
which talented periodical Mademoiselle Cicogna’s book was 
first raised.” 

“ Of course I know that ; a journal which, so far as I 
have looked into its political or social articles, certainly 
written by a cleverer and an older man than M. Bameau, 
is for unsettling all things and settling nothing. We have 
writers of that kind among ourselves. I have no sympathy 
with them. To me it seems that when a man says, ‘ Off with 
your head,’ he ought to let us know what other head he 
would put on our shoulders, and by what process the change 
of heads shall be effected. Honestly speaking, if you and 
your charming wife are intimate friends and admirers of 
Mademoiselle Cicogna, I think you could not do her a greater 
service than that of detaching her from all connection with 
men like M. Bameau and journals like ‘Xe Sens Commun' ” 

The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his lips, lowered 
his head to a level with Graham’s, and, relaxing into an arch 
significant smile, said, “ Start to Paris, and dissuade her your. 

VoL. II. 14 


210 


THE PARISIANS. 


self. Start — go ahead — don’t be shy — don’t see-saw on the 
beam of speculation. You will have more influence with that 
young female than we can boast,” 

Never was England in greater danger of quarrel with 
America than at that moment ; but Graham curbed his first 
wrathful impulse, and replied, coldly — 

“ It seems to me. Colonel, that you, though very uncon- 
sciously, derogate from the respect due to Mademoiselle 
Cicogna. That the counsel of a married couple like your- 
self and Mrs. Morley should be freely given to and duly 
heeded by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in parents, 
is a reasonable and honorable supposition ; but to imply that 
the most influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a 
young single man, in no way related to her, appears to me a 
dereliction of that regard to the dignity of her sex which is 
the chivalrous characteristic of your countrymen, — and to 
Mademoiselle Cicogna herself a surmise which she would be 
justified in resenting as an impertinence.” 

“I deny both allegations,” replied the Colonel, serenely. 
“ I maintain that a single man whips all connubial creation 
when it comes to gallantizing a single young woman ; and 
that no young lady would be justified in resenting as imperti- 
nence my friendly suggestion to the single man so deserving 
of her consideration as I estimate you to be, to solicit the 
right to advise her for life. And that’s a caution.” 

Here the Colonel resumed his regalia, and again gazed 
intently on the ceiling. 

“ Advise her for life ! You mean, I presume, as a candi- 
date for her hand?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


211 


“ You don’t Turkey now. Well, I guess you are not wide 
of the mark there, sir.” 

“ You do me infinite honor, but I do not presume so far.” 

“ So, so — not as yet. Before a man who is not without 
gumption runs himself for Congress, he likes to calculate 
how the votes will run. Well, sir, suppose we are in caucus, 
and let us discuss the chances of the election with closed 
doors.” 

Graham could not help smiling at the persistent officious- 
ness of his visitor, but his smile was a very sad one. 

“ Pray change the subject, my dear Colonel Morley — it is 
not a pleasant one to me; and as regards Mademoiselle 
Cicogna, can you think it would not shock her to suppose 
that her name was dragged into the discussion you would 
provoke, even with closed doors ?” 

“ Sir,” replied the Colonel, imperturbably, “ since the doors 
are closed, there is no one, unless it be a spirit-listener under 
the table, who can wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the sub- 
stance of debate. And, for my part, I do not believe in 
spiritual manifestations. Fact is, that I have the most ami- 
cable sentiments towards both parties, and if there is a mis- 
understanding which is opposed to the union of the States, I 
wish to remove it while yet in time. Now, let us suppose 
that you decline to be a candidate ; there are plenty of others 
who will run ; and as an elector must choose one representa- 
tive or other, so a gal must choose one husband or other. 
And then you only repent when it is too late. It is a great 
thing to be first in the field. Let us approximate to the point ; 
the chances seem good — will you run ? — Yes or No ?” 


212 


THE PARISIANS. 


I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I entertain no such pre- 
sumption.” 

The Colonel here, rising, extended his hand, which Graham 
shook with constrained cordiality, and then leisurely walked 
to the door ; there he paused, as if struck by a new thought, 
and said gravely, in his natural tone of voice, “ You have 
nothing to say, sir, against the young lady’s character and 
honor ?” 

“ I ! — heavens, no I Colonel Morley, such a question insults 
me !” 

The Colonel resumed his deepest nasal bass ; It is only, 
then, because you don’t fancy her now so much as you did 
last year — fact, you are soured on her, and fly olF the handle. 
Such things do happen. The same thing has happened to 
myself, sir. In my days of celibacy, there was a gal at Sara- 
toga whom I gallantized, and whom, while I was at Saratoga, 
I thought Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley. I was on 
the very point of telling her so, when I was suddenly called 
off to Philadelphia; and at Philadelphia, sir, I found that 
Heaven had made another Mrs. Morley. I state this fact, sir, 
though I seldom talk of my own affairs, even when willing to 
tender my advice in the affairs of another, in order to prove 
that I do not intend to censure you if Heaven has served you 
in the same manner. Sir, a man may go blind for one gal 
when he is not yet dry behind the ears, and then, when his 
eyes are skinned, go in for one better. All things mortal meet 
with a change, as my sister’s little boy said when, at the age 
of eight, he quitted the Methodys and turned Shaker. Threep 
and argue as we may, you and I are both mortals — more’s the 


THE PARISIANS. 


213 


pity. Good-morning, sir (glancing at the clock, which pro- 
claimed the hour of 3 p.m.), — I err — good-evening.” 

By the post that day the Colonel transmitted a condensed 
and laconic report of his conversation with Graham Vane. I 
can state its substance in yet fewer words. He wrote word 
that Graham positively declined the invitation to Paris ; that 
he had then, agreeably to Lizzy’s instructions, ventilated the 
Englishman, in the most delicate terms, as to his intentions with 
regard to Isaura, and that no intentions at all existed. The 
sooner all thoughts of him were relinquished and a new suitor 
on the ground, the better it would be for the young lady’s 
happiness in the only state in which happiness should he, if 
not found, at least sought, whether by maid or man. 

Mrs. Morley was extremely put out by this untoward result 
of the diplomacy she had intrusted to the Colonel ; and when, 
the next day, came a very courteous letter from Graham, 
thanking her gratefully for the kindness of her invitation, and 
expressing his regret briefly, though cordially, at his inability 
to profit by it, without the most distant allusion to the subject 
which the Colonel had brought on the ta'pis^ or even requesting 
his compliments to the Signoras Yenosta and Cicogna, she was 
more than put out, more than resentful, — she was deeply 
grieved. Being, however, one of those gallant heroes of woman- 
kind who do not give in at the first defeat, she began to doubt 
whether Frank had not rather overstrained the delicacy which 
he said he had put into his “ soundings.” He ought to have 
been more explicit. Meanwhile, she resolved to call on Isaura, 
and, without mentioning Graham’s refusal of her invitation, 
endeavor to ascertain whether the attachment which she felt 


214 


THE PARISIANS. 


persuaded the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant Eng- 
lishman were something more than the first romantic fancy — 
whether it were sufficiently deep to justify further efibrt on 
Mrs. Morley’s part to bring it to a prosperous issue. 

She found Isaura at home and alone ; and, to do her justice, 
she exhibited wonderful tact in the fulfillment of the task she 
had set herself. Forming her judgment by manner and look — - 
not words — she returned home convinced that she ought to 
seize the opportunity afibrded to her by Graham’s letter. It 
was one to which she might very naturally reply, and in that 
reply she might convey the object at her heart more felicitously 
than.the Colonel had done. “ The cleverest 4nan is,” she said 
to herself, “ stupid compared to an ordinary woman in the real 
business of life, which does not consist of fighting and money- 
making.” 

Now, there was one point she had ascertained by words in 
her visit to Isaura — a point on which all might depend. She 
had asked Isaura when and where she had seen Graham last; 
and when Isaura had given her that information, and she learned 
it was on the eventful day on which Isaura gave her consent 
to the publication of her MS., if approved by Savarin, in the 
journal to be set up by the handsome-faced young author, she 
leaped to the conclusion that Graham had been seized with no 
unnatural jealousy, and was still under the illusive glamoury of 
that green-eyed fiend. She was confirmed in this notion, not 
altogether an unsound one, when, asking with apparent care- 
lessness, “ And in that last interview did you see any change 
in Mr. Vane’s manner, especially when he took leave?” 
Isaura turned away, pale, and, involuntarily clasping her 


TH5 PARISIANS. 


215 


hands — as women do when they would suppress pain — replied, 
in a low voice, “ His manner was changed.” 

Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote the following 
letter : — 

“ Dear Mr. Vane, — I am very angry indeed with you for 
refusing my invitation, — I had so counted on you, and I don’t 
believe a word of your excuse. Engagements ! To balls and 
dinners, I suppose ; as if you were not much too clever to care 
about these silly attempts to enjoy solitude in crowds. And 
as to what you men call business, you have no right to have 
any business at all. You are not in commerce ; you are not in 
Parliament ; you told me yourself that you had no great landed 
estates to give you trouble ; you are rich, without any necessity 
to take pains to remain rich or to become richer ; you have no 
business in the world except to please yourself : and when you- 
will not come to Paris to see one of your truest friends — which 
I certainly am — it simply means that, no matter how such a 
visit would please me, it does not please yourself. I call 
that abominably rude and ungrateful. 

“ But I am not writing merely to scold you. I have some- 
thing else on my mind, and it must come out. Certainly, 
when you were at Paris last year you did admire, above all 
other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna. And I honored you for 
doing so. I know no young lady to be called her equal. 
Well, if you admired her then, what would you do now if you 
met her ? Then she was but a girl — very brilliant, very 
charming, it is true — but undeveloped, untested. Now she is 
a woman, a princess among women, but retaining all that is 
most lovable in a girl ; so courted, yet so simple — so gifted, 
yet so innocent. Her head is not a bit turned by all the flat- 
tery that surrounds her. Come and judge for yourself. I 
still hold the door of the rooms destined to you open for re- 
pentance. 


216 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ My dear Mr. Yane, do not think me a silly match-making 
little woman when I write to you thus d coeur ouvert. 

“ I like you so much that I would fain secure to you the 
rarest prize which life is ever likely to offer to your ambition. 
Where can you hope to find another Isaura? Among the 
stateliest daughters of your English dukes, where is there one 
whom a proud man would be more proud to show to the world, 
saying, ‘ She is mine I’ where one more distinguished — I 
will not say by mere beauty, there she might be eclipsed — 
but by sweetness and dignity combined — in aspect, manner, 
every movement, every smile? 

“ And you, who are yourself so clever, so well read — you, 
who would be so lonely with a wife who was not your com- 
panion, with whom you could not converse on equal terms of 
intellect, — my dear friend, where could you find a companion 
in whom you would not miss the poet-soul of Isaura ? Of 
course I should not dare to obtrude all these questionings on 
your innermost reflections if I had not some idea, right or 
wrong, that since the days when at Enghien and Montmo- 
rency, seeing you and Isaura side by side, I whispered to 
Frank, ‘ So should those two be through life,’ some cloud has 
passed between your eyes and the future on which they gazed. 
Cannot that cloud be dispelled ? Were you so unjust to your- 
self as to be jealous of a rival, perhaps of a Gustave Kameau ? 
I write to you frankly — answer me frankly ; and if you an- 
swer, ‘ Mrs. Morley, I don’t know what you mean ; I ad- 
mired Mademoiselle Cicogna as I might admire any other pretty 
accomplished girl, but it is really nothing to me whether she mar- 
ries Gustave Rameau or any one else,’ — why, then burn this 
letter — forget that it has been written ; and may you never 
know the pang of remorseful sigh if in the days to come you see 
her— whose name in that case I should profane did I repeat it — 
the comrade of another man’s mind, the half of another man’s 
heart, the pride and delight of another man’s blissful home.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


217 


CHAPTER IV. 

There is somewhere in Lord Lytton’^ writings — writings 
BO numerous that I may be pardoned if I cannot remember 
where — a critical definition of the difference between dra- 
matic and narrative art of story, instanced by that marvelous 
passage in the loftiest of Sir Walter Scott’s works, in which 
all the anguish of • Ravenswood on the night before he has to 
meet Lucy’s brother in mortal combat is conveyed without 
the spoken words required in tragedy. It is only to be con- 
jectured by the tramp of his heavy boots to and fro all tho 
night long in his solitary chamber, heard below by the faith- 
ful Caleb. The drama could not have allowed that treat- 
ment ; the drama must have put ifato words, as “ soliloquy,” 
agonies which the non-dramatic narrator knows that no so- 
liloquy can describe. Humbly do I imitate, then, th^ great 
master of narrative in declining to put into words the Confiiet 
between love and reason that' tortured the heart of Graham 
Vane when dropping noiselessly the letter I have just tran- 
scribed. He covered his face with his hands, and remained 
I know not how long in the same position, his head bowed, 
not a sound escaping from his lips. 

He did not stir from his rooms that day ; and had there 
been a Caleb’s faithful ear to listen, his tread, too, might 
have been heard all that sleepless night, passing to and fro, 
but pausing oft, along his solitary floors. 

VoL. II.— K 


218 


THE PARISIANS. 


Possibly love would have borne down all opposing reasou 
ings, doubts, and prejudices, but for incidents that occurred 
the following evening. On that evening Graham dined en 
famiUe with his cousins the Altons. After dinner, the Duke 
produced the design for a cenotaph inscribed to the memory 
of his aunt, Lady Janet King, which he proposed to place 
in the family chapel at Alton. 

“ I know,” said the Duke, kindly, “ you would wish the 
old house from which she sprang to preserve some such 
record of her who loved you as her son ; and, even putting 
you out of the question, it gratifies me to attest the claim 
of our family to a daughter who continues to be famous for 
her goodness, and made the goodness so lovable that envy 
forgave it for being famous. It was a pang to me when 
poor Richard King decided on placing her tomb among, 
strangers ; but in conceding his rights as to her resting- 
place I retain mine to her name, ‘ Nostris Uheris virtutis 
exemplar.^ ” 

Graham wrung his cousin’s hand — he could not speak, 
choked by suppressed tears. 

The Duchess, who loved and honored Lady Janet almost 
as much as did her husband, fairly sobbed aloud. She had, 
indeed, reason for grateful memories of the deceased ; there 
had been some obstacles to her marriage with the man who 
had won her heart, arising from political difierences and 
family feuds between their parents, which the gentle media- 
tion of Lady Janet had smoothed away. And never did 
union founded on, mutual and ardent love more belie the 
assertions of the great Bichat (esteemed by Dr. Buckle the 


THE PARISIANS. 


219 


finest intellect which practical philosophy has exhibited since 
Aristotle) that “ Love is a sort of fever which does not last 
beyond two years,” than that between these eccentric speci- 
mens of a class denounced as frivolous and heartless by 
philosophers, English and French, who have certainly never 
heard of Bichat. 

When the emotion the Duke had exhibited was calmed 
down, his wife pushed towards Graham a sheet of paper in- 
scribed with the epitaph composed by his hand. “ Is it not 
beautiful?” she said, falteringly — “not a word too much or 
too little.” 

Graham read the inscription slowly, and with very dimmed 
eyes. It deserved the praise bestowed on it ; for the Duke, 
though a shy and awkward speaker, was an incisive and 
graceful writer. 

Yet in his innermost self Graham shivered when he read 
that epitaph, it expressed so emphatically the reverential 
nature of the love which Lady Janet had inspired — the 
genial influences which the holiness of a character so active 
in doing good had diffused around it. It brought vividly 
before Graham that image of perfect spotless womanhood. 
And a voice within him asked, “ Would that cenotaph be 
placed amid the monuments of an illustrious lineage if the 
secret known to thee could transpire ? What though the lost 
one were really as unsullied by sin as the world deems, would 
the name now treasured as an heirloom not be a memory of 
gall and a sound of shame?” 

He remained so silent after putting do^yu the inscription 
that the Duke said modestly, “ My dear Graham, I see that 


220 


THE PARISIANS. 


you do not like what I have written. Your pen is much 
more practiced than mine. If I did not ask you to compose 
the epitaph, it was because I thought it would please you 
more in coming, as a spohtaneoiis tribute due ' to her, from 
the representative of her family. But will you correct my 
sketch, or give me another according to your own ideas?” 

“I see not a word to alter,” said Graham. “ Forgive me 
if my silence wronged my emotion: the truest eloquence is 
that which holds us too mute for applause.” 

“ I knew you would like it. Leopold is always so disposed 
to underrate himself,” said the Duchess, whose hand was 
resting fondly on her husband’s shoulder. “ Epitaphs are so 
difficult to write — especially epitaphs on women, of whom in 
life the least said the better. Janet was the only woman I 
ever knew whom one could praise in safety.” 

“Well expressed,” said the Diike, smiling; “and I wish 
you would make that safety clear to some lady friends of 
yours, to whom it might serve as a lesson. Proof against 
every breath of scandal herself, Janet King never uttered and 
never encouraged One. ill-natured word against another. But 
I am afraid, my dear fellow, that I must leave you to a tete-oA 
tete with Eleanor. You know that I must be at the House 
this evening. I only paired till half-past nine.” 

“ I will walk down to the House with you, if you are 
going on foot.” 

“ No,” said the Duchess ; “ you must resign yourself to me 
for at least half an hour. I was looking over youi* aunt’s 
letters to-day, and I found one which I wish to show you : it 
is all about yourself, and written within the last few months 


THE PARISIANS. 


221 


of her life.” Here slie put her amu into Giraham's and led 
him into her own private drawing-room, which, though others 
might call it a boudoir, she dignified by the name of her 
study. The Duke remained for some minutes thoughtfully 
leaning his arm on the mantelpiece. It was no unimportant 
debate in the Lords that night, and on a subject in which be 
took great interest, and the details of which he had thoroughly 
mastered. He had been requested to speak, if only a few 
words; for his high character and his reputation for good 
sense gave weight to the mere utterance of his opinion. But, 
though no one had more moral courage in action, the Duke 
had a terror at the very thought of addressing an audience 
which made him despise himself. 

“ Ah I” he muttered, if Graham Vane were but in Parlia- 
ment, I could trust him to say exactly what I would rather 
be swallowed up by an earthquake than stand up and say for 
myself. But now he has got money he seems to think of 
nothing but saving it.” 


CHAPTER V. 

The letter from Lady Janet, which the Duchess took from 
the desk and placed in Graham’s hand, was in strange coin- 
cidence with the subject that for the last twenty-four hours 
had absorbed his thoughts and tortured his heart. Speaking 
of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, the writer proceeded 
to confide her earnest wish that he should not longer delay 


222 


THE PARISIANS. 

that change in life which, concentrating so much that k 
vague in the desires and aspirations of man, leaves his heart 
and his mind, made serene by the contentment of home, free 
for the steadfast consolidation of their warmth and their light 
upon the ennobling duties that unite the individual to his 
race. 

“ There is no one,” wrote Lady Janet, “ whose character 
and career a felicitous choice in marriage can have greater 
influence over than this dear adopted son of mine. I do not 
fear that in any case he will be liable to the errors of his 
brilliant father. His early reverse of fortune here seems to me 
one of those blessings which Heaven conceals in the form of 
affliction. For in youth, the genial freshness of his gay ani- 
mal spirits, a native generosity mingled with desire of display 
and thirst for applause, made me somewhat alarmed for his 
future. But, though he still retains these attributes of char- 
acter, they are no longer predominant ; they are modified and 
chastened. He has learned prudence. But what I now fear 
most for him is that which he does not show in the world, 
which neither Leopold nor you seem to detect, — it is an 
exceeding sensitiveness of pride. I know not how else to 
describe it. It is so interwoven with the highest qualities 
that I sometimes dread injury to them could it be torn away 
from the faultier ones which it supports. 

“It is interwoven with that lofty independence of spirit 
which has made him refuse openings the most alluring to his 
ambition ; it communicates a touching grandeur to his self- 
denying thrift ; it makes him so tenacious of his word once 
given, so cautious before he gives it. Public life to him is 


THE PARISIANS. 


223 


essential ; without it he would be incomplete ; and yet I sigh 
to think that whatever success he may achieve in it will be 
attended with proportionate pain. Calumny goes side by side 
with fame, and, courting fame as a man, he is as thin-skinned 
to calumny as a woman. 

“The wife for Graham should have qualities not, taken 
individually, uncommon in English wives, but in combination 
somewhat rare. 

“ She must have mind enough to appreciate his — not to 
clash with it. She must be fitted with sympathies to be 
his dearest companion, his confidante in the hopes and fears 
which the slightest want of sympathy would make him keep 
ever afterwards pent within his breast. In herself worthy of 
distinction, she must merge all distinction in his. You have 
met in the world men who, marrying professed beauties or 
professed literary geniuses, are spoken of as the husband of the 

beautiful Mrs. A or of the clever Mrs. B : can you 

fancy Graham Vane in the reflected light of one of those 
husbands ? I trembled last year when I thought he was 
attracted by a face which the artists raved about, and again 
by a tongue which dropped horn mots that went the round 
of the clubs. I was relieved when, sounding him, he said, 
laughingly, ‘ No, dear aunt, I should be one sore from head 
to foot if I married a wife that was talked about for anything 
but goodness.’ 

“ No, — Graham Vane will have pains sharp enough if he live 
to be talked about himself. But that tenderest half of himself, 
the bearer of the name he would make, and for the dignity of 
which he alone would be responsible, — if that were the town 


224 


THE PARISIANS. 


talk, he would curse the hour he gave any one the right to 
take on herself his man’s burden of calumny and fame. I 
know not which I should pity the most, Graham Vane or 
his wife. 

“ Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? No doubt you 
do so far, that you comprehend that the women whom men 
most admire are not the women we, as women ourselves, 
would wish our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps you 
do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this — for in 
such matters men do not see as we women do — Graham 
abhors, in the girls of our time, frivolity and insipidity. Very 
rightly, you will say. True; but then he is too likely to be 
allured by contrasts. I have seen him attracted by the very 
girls we recoil from more than we do from those we allow 
to be frivolous and insipid. I accused him of admiration for 
a certain young lady whom you call ‘ odious,’ and whom the 
slang that has come into vogue calls ‘ fast ;’ and I was not 
satisfied with his answer — ‘ Certainly I admire her ; she is 
not a doll — she has ideas.’ I would rather of the two sec 
Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a girl 
with ideas which are distasteful to women.” 

Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about 
a Miss Asterisk, with whom this tale will have nothing to do, 
but who, from the little which Lady Janet had seen of her, 
might possess all the requisites that fastidious correspondent 
would exact for the wife of her adopted son. 

This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London 
world by the Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady 
Janet that, if earth could be ransacked, a more suitable wife 


THE PARISIANS. 


225 


for Graham Yane than Miss Asterisk could not be found ; she 
was well born — an heiress ; the estates she inherited were in 

the county of (viz., the county in which the ancestors of 

D’Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their where- 
about). Miss Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man’s 
eye, but not with the beauty of which artists rave ; well in- 
formed enough to be companion to a welhinformed man, but 
certainly not witty enough to supply hons mots to the clubs. 

, Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband 
might be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe 
from being talked about. 

And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham’s eye, 
the Duchess had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. 
Miss Asterisk had confided to her friend, that, of all men she 
had seen, Mr. Graham Yane was the one she would feel the 
least inclined to refuse. 

So when Graham Yane returned the letter to the Duchess, 
simply saying, “ How well my dear aunt divined what is 
weakest in me I” the Duchess replied quickly, “ Miss Asterisk 
dines here to-morrow ; pray come : you would like her if you 
knew more of her.” 

* “ To-morrow I am engaged— an American friend of mine 

dines with me ; but ’tis no matter, for I sha^l never feel more 
for Miss Asterisk than I feel for Mont Blanc.” 


VOL. II.-K* 


15 


226 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTEE VI. 

On leaving his cousin’s house, Graham walked on, he scarce 
knew or cared whither, the image of the beloved dead so for- 
cibly recalled the solemnity of the mission with which he had 
been intrusted, and which hitherto he had failed to fulfill. 
What if the only mode by which he could, without causing 
questions and suspicions that might result in dragging to day 
the terrible nature of the trust he held, enrich the daughter 
of Eichard King, repair all wrong hitherto done to her, and 
guard the sanctity of Lady Janet’s home, should be in that 
union which Eichard King had commended to him while his 
heart was yet free ? 

In such a case, would not gratitude to the dead, duty to the 
living, make that union imperative at whatever sacrifice of 
happiness to himself? The two years to which Eichard King 
had limited the suspense of research were not yet expired. 
Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet’s — so tenderly anxious 
for his future, so clear-sighted as to the elements of his own* 
character in its ^strength and its infirmities— ^combined with 
graver causes to withhold his heart from its yearning impulse, 
and — no, not steel it against Isaura, but forbid it to realize, in 
the fair creature and creator of romance, his ideal of the woman 
to whom an earnest, sagacious, aspiring man commits all the 
destinies involved in the serene dignity of his hearth. He 
could not but own that this gifted author — this eager seeker 


THE PARISIANS. 


227 


after fame — tliis brilliant and bold competitor with men on 
their own stormy battle-ground — was the very person from 
whom Lady Janet would have warned away his choice. She 
(Isaura) merge her own distinction in a husband’s! — she 
leave exclusively to him the burden of fame and calumny ! — 
she shun “ to be talked about” ! — she, who could feel her life 
to be a success or a failure, according to the extent and the 
loudness of the talk which it courted ! 

While these thoughts racked his mind, a kindly hand 
was laid on his arm, and a cheery voice accosted him. “ Well 
met, my dear Vane 1 I see we are bound to the same place. 
There will be a good gathering to-night.” 

“ What do you mean, Bevil ? I am going nowhere, except 
to my own quiet rooms.” 

“ Pooh 1 come in here, at least for a few minutes.” And 
Bevil drew him up the door-step of a house close by, where, 
on certain evenings, a well-known club drew together men who 
seldom met so familiarly elsewhere — men of all callings; a 
club especially favored by wits, authors, and the flaneurs of 
polite society. 

G-raham shook his head, about to refuse, when Bevil added, 
“ I have just come from Paris, and can give you the last news, 
literary, political, and social. By the way, I saw Savarin 
the other night at the Cicogna’s — he introduced me there.” 
Graham winced ; he was spelled by the music of a name, and 
followed his acquaintance into the crowded room, and, after 
returning many greetings and nods, withdrew into a remote 
corner and motioned Bevil to a seat beside him. 

“ So you met Savarin ? Where, did you say ?” 


228 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ At the house of the new lady author — I hate the word 
authoress ! — Mademoiselle Cicogna. Of course you have read 
her book?” 

“ Yes.” 

“Full of fine things, is it not?- — though somewhat high- 
flown and sentimental ; however, nothing succeeds like success. 
No hook has been more talked about at Paris ; the only thing 
more talked about is the lady author herself.” 

“ Indeed ! and how ?” 

“ She doesn’t look twenty, a mere girl — of that kind of 
beauty which so arrests the eye that you pass by other faces 
to gaze on it, and the dullest stranger would ask, ‘ Who and 
what is she?’ A-girl, I say, like that — who lives as independ- 
ently as if she were a middle-aged widow, receives every week 
(she has her Thursdays), with no other chaperon than an old 
ci-devant Italian sin^ng-woman dressed like a guy — must set 
Parisian tongues into play, even if she had not written the 
crack book of the season.” 

“ Mademoiselle Cicogna receives on Thursdays, — no harm 
in that ; and if she have no other chaperon than the Italian 
lady you mention, it is because Mademoiselle Cicogna is an 
orphan, and having a fortune, such as it is, of her own, I do 
not see why she should not live as independently as many an 
unmarried woman in London placed under similar circum- 
stances. I suppose she receives chiefly persons in the 
literary or artistic world; and if they are all as respectable 
as the Savarins, I do not think ill-nature itself could find 
fault with her social circle.” 

“ Ah ! you know the Cicogna, I presume. I am sure I 


THE PARISIANS. 


229 


did not wisli to say anything that could offend her best 
friends ; only I do think it is a pity she is not married, — 
poor girl 1” 

“ Mademoiselle Cicogna, accomplished, beautiful, of good 
birth (the Cicognas rank among the oldest of Lombard fami- 
lies), is not likely to want offers.’’ 

“ Offers of marriage, — h’m — ^well, I daresay, from authors 
and artists. . You know Paris better even than I do ; but I 
don’t suppose authors and artists there make the most de- 
sirable husbands ; and I scarcely know a marriage in France 
between a man author and a lady author which does not end 
in the deadliest of all animosities — that of wounded amour- 
propre. Perhaps the man admires his own genius too much 
to do proper homage to his wife’s.” 

“ But the choice of Mademoiselle Cicogna need not be 
restricted to the pale of authorship. Doubtless she has many 
admirers beyond that quarrelsome borderland.” 

“ Certainly — countless adorers. Enguerrand de Vandemar 
— ^you know that diamond of dandies ?” 

“ Perfectly. Is he an admirer ?” 

. “C'eZa va Mns dire — he told me that, though she was 
not the handsomest woman in Paris, all other women looked 
less handsome since he had seen her. But of course French 
lady-killers like Enguerrand, when it comes to marriage, 
leave it to their parents to choose their wives and arrange the 
terms of the contract. Talking of lady-killers, I beheld amid 
the throng at Mademoiselle Cicogna’s the ci-devant Lovelace 
whom I remember some twenty-three years ago as the darling 
of wives and the terror of husbands — Victor de Mauh^on.” 


230 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Victor de Mauleon at Mademoiselle Cicogna’s I — wliat ! 
is that man restored to society ?” 

“ Ah ! you are thinking of the ugly old story about the 
jewels. Oh, yes, he has got over that; all his grand relations, 
the Vandemars, Beauvilliers, Rochebriant, and others, took 
him by the hand when he reappeared at Paris last year ; and, 
though I believe he is still avoided by many, he is courted by 
still more — and avoided, I fancy, rather from political tlian 
social causes. The Imperialist set, of course, execrate and, 
proscribe him. You know he is the writer of those biting 
articles signed ‘ Pierre Firmin’ in the ‘ Sens Commun and I 
am told he is the proprietor of that very clever journal, which 
has become a power.” 

“ So so — that is the journal in which Mademoiselle Ci- 
cogna’s roman first appeared. So so — Victor de, Maul4on 
one of her associates, her counselor and friend, — ah !” 

“ No, I didn’t say that ; on the contrary, he was presented 
to her for the first time the evening I was at the house, I 
saw that young silk-haired coxcomb, Gustave Rameau, intro- 
duce him to her. You don’t perhaps know Rameau, editor 
of the ‘ Sens Commun ' — writes poems and criticisms. They 
say he is a Red Republican ; but De Mauleon keeps truculent 
French politics subdued if not suppressed in his cynical jour- 
nal. Somebody told me that the Cicogna is very much in 
love with Rameau ; certainly he has a handsome face of his 
own, and that is the reason why she was so rude to the 
Russian Prince X .” 

How rude ? Did the Prince propose to her ?” 

“Propose! you forget — ^he is married. Don’t you know 


THE PARISIANS. 


2*il 

the Princess ? Still, there are other kinds of proposals than 
those of marriage which a rich Russian prince may venture 
to make to a pretty novelist brought up for the stage.” 

“ Bevil !” cried Graham, grasping the man’s arm fiercely, 
“ how dare you ?” 

“My dear boy,” said Bevil, very much astonished, “I 
really did not know that your interest in the young lady was 
so great. If I have wounded you in relating a mere on dit 
picked up at the Jockey Club, I beg you a thousand pardons. 
I daresay there was not a word of truth in it.” 

“ Not a word of truth, you may be sure, if the on dit was 
injurious to Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is true, I have a 
strong interest in her ; any man — any gentleman — would 
have such interest in a girl so brilliant and seemingly so 
friendless. It shames one of human nature to think that the 
reward which the world makes to those who elevate its plati- 
tudes, brighten its dullness, delight its leisure, is— Slander ! 
I have had the honor to make the acquaintance of this lady 
before she became a ‘ celebrity,’ and I have never met ]n my 
path through life a purer heart or a nobler nature. What is 
the wretched on dit you condescend to circulate? Permit 
me to add — 

* He who repeats a slander shares the crime.’ ” 

“ Upen my honor, my dear Vane,” said Bevil, seriously 
(he did not want for spirit), “ I hardly know you this even- 
ing. It is not because dueling is out of fashion that a man 
should allow himself to speak in a tone that gives offense to 
another who intended none ; and if dueling is out of fashion 
in England, it is still possible in France. Entre nous, I 


232 


THE PARISIANS. 


would rather cross the Channel with you than submit to lan- 
guage that conveys unmerited insult.” 

Graham’s cheek, before ashen pale, flushed into dark red. 
“ I understand you,” he said quietly, “ and will be at Bou- 
logne to-morrow.” 

“ Graham Vane,” replied Bevil, with much dignity, “ you 
and I have known each other a great many years, and neither 
of us has cause to question the courage of the other; but 
I am much older than yourself — permit me to take the 
melancholy advantage of seniority. A duel between us in 
consequence of careless words said about a lady in no way 
connected with either would be a cruel injury to her ; a duel 
on grounds so slight would little injure me — a man about 
town, who would not sit an hour in the House of Commons 
if you paid him a thousand pounds a minute. But you, 
Graham Vane — ^you whose destiny it is to canvass electors 
and make laws — would it not be an injury to you to be ques- 
tioned at the hustings why you broke the law and why you 
sought another man’s life ? Come, come ! shake hands, and 
consider all that seconds, if we chose them, would exact, is 
said, every afi'ront on either side retracted, every apology on 
either side made.” 

“ Bevil, you disarm and conquer me. I spoke like a hot- 
headed fool ; forget it — ^forgive. But — but — I oan listen 
calmly now — what is that oil dit 

“ One that thoroughly bears out your own very manly up- 
holding of the poor young orphan, whose name I shall never 
again mention without such respect as would satisfy her most 
sensitive champion. It was said that the Prince X 


THE PARISIANS. 


233 


boasted that before a week was out Mademoiselle Cicogna 
should appear in his carriage at the Bois de Boulogne, and 
wear at the opera diamonds he had sent to her; that this 
boast was enforced by a wager, and the terms of the wager 
compelled the Prince to confess the means he had taken to 
succeed, and produce the evidence that he had lost or won. 
According to this on dit^ the Prince had written to Mademoi- 
selle Cicogna, and the letter had been accompanied by a 
parure that cost him half a million of francs ; but the dia- 
monds had been sent back, with a few words of such scorn 
as a queen might address to an upstart lackey. But, my dear 
Vane, it is a mournful position for a girl to receive such 
offers; and you must agree with me in wishing she were 
safelj” married, even to Monsieur Bameau, coxcomb though 
he be. Let us hope that they will be an exception to French 
authors, male and female, in general, and live like turtle- 
doves.” 


CHAPTEB VII. 

A FEW days after the date of the last chapter. Colonel Mor- 
ley returned to Paris. He had dined with Graham ’at Green- 
wich, had met him afterwards in society, and paid him a 
farewell visit on the day before the Colonel’s departure ; but 
the name of Tsaura Cicogna had not again been uttered by 
either. Morley was surprised that his wife did not question 
him minutely as to the mode in which he had executed her 
20 * 


234 


THE PARISIANS. 


delicate commission, and the manner as well as words with 
which Graham had replied to his “ventilations.” But his 
Lizzy cut him short when he began his recital — 

“ I don’t want to hear anything more about the man. He 
has thrown away a prize richer than his ambition will ever 
gain, even if it gained him a throne.” 

“ That it can’t gain him in the old country. The people 
are loyal to the present dynasty, whatever you may be told to 
the contrary.” 

“ Don’t be so horribly literal, Frank ; that subject is done 
with. How was the Duchess of M dressed?” 

But when the Colonel had retired to what the French called 
the cabinet de travail — and which he^more accurately termed 
his “smoke-den” — and there indulged in the cigar, which, de- 
spite his American citizenship, was forbidden in the drawing- 
room of the tyrant who ruled his life, Mrs. Morley took from 
her desk a letter received three days before, and brooded over 
it intently, studying every word. When she had thus re- 
perused it, her tears fell upon the page. “ Poor Isaura !” she 
muttered — “ poor Isaura ! I know she loves him — and how 
deeply a nature like hers can love ! But I must break it to 
her. If I did not, she would remain nursing a vain dream, 
and refuse every chance of real happiness for the sake of 
nursing it.” Then she mechanically folded up the letter — I 
need not say it was from Graham Vane — restored it to the 
desk, and remained musing till the Colonel looked in at the 
door and said peremptorily, “ Very late — come to bed.” 

The next day Madame Savarin called on Isaura. 

“ CJitre enfant^'"' said she, “ I have bad news for you. 


THE PARISIANS. 


235 


Poor Gustave is very ill — an attack of the lungs, and fever ; 
you know how delicate he is.” 

“ I am sincerely grieved,” said Isaura, in earnest tender 
tones. “ It must be a very sudden attack : he was here last 
Thursday.” 

“ The malady only declared itself yesterday morning ; but 
surely you must have observed how ill he has been looking 
for several days past. It pained me to see him.” 

“ I did not notice any change in him,” said Isaura, somewhat 
conscience-stricken. Wrapt in her own happy thoughts, she 
would not have noticed change in faces yet more familiar to 
her than that of her young admirer. 

“ Isaura,” said Madame Savarin, “ I suspect there are moral 
causes for our friend’s failing health. Why should I disguise 
my meaning? You know well how madly he is in love with 
you; and have you denied him hope?” 

“ I like M. Bameau as a friend ; I admire him — at times I 
pity him.” 

“ Pity is akin to love.” 

I doubt the truth of that saying, at all events as you apply 
it now. I could not love M. Bameau ; I never gave him cause 
to think I could.” 

“ I wish for both your sakes that you could make me a 
different answer; for his sake, because, knowing his faults 
and failings, I am persuaded that they would vanish in a com- 
panionship so pure, so elevating as yours: you could make him 
not only so much happier but so much better a man. Hush ! 
let me go on, let me come to yourself, — I say for your sake I 
wish it. Your pursuits, your ambition, are akin to his ; you 


236 


THE PARISIANS. 


should not marry one who could not sympathize with you in 
these. If you did, he might either restrict the exercise of 
your genius or be chafed at its display. The only authoress 
I ever knew whose marriage lot was serenely happy to the last 
was the greatest of English poetesses married to a great Eng- 
lish poet. You cannot, you ought not to, devote yourself to 
the splendid career to which your genius irresistibly impels 
you, without that counsel, that support, that:protection, which 
a husband alone can give. My dear child, as the wife myself 
of a man of letters, and familiarized to all the gossip, all the 
scandal, to which they who give their names to the public are 
exposed, I declare that, if I had a daughter who inherited Sav- 
arin’s talents and was ambitious of attaining to his renown, I 
would rather shut her up in a convent than let her publish a 
book that was in every one’s hands until she had sheltered 
her name under that of a husband ; and if I say this of my 
child, with a father so wise in the world’s ways and so popu- 
larly respected as my hon homme, what must I feel to be es- 
sential to your safety, poor stranger in our land ! poor splitary 
orphan ! with no other advice or guardian than the singing- 
mistress whom you touchingly call ‘ Madre ’ ! I see how I 
distress and pain you — I cannot help it. Listen. The other 
evening Savarin came back from his favorite cafe in a state of 
excitement that made me think he came to announce a revo- 
lution. It was about you ; he stormed, he Wept — actually 
wept — my philosophical laughing Savarin. He had just heard 
of that atrocious wager made by a Russian barbarian. Every 
one praised you for the contempt with which you had treated 
the savage’s insolence. But that you should have been sub- 


THE PARISIANS. 


237 


mitted to sucli an insult without one male friend who had the 
right; to resent and chastise it — you cannot think how Savarin 
was chafed and galled. You know how he admires, but you can^ 
not guess how he reveres you ; and since then he says to me 
every day,' ‘ That girl must not remain single. Better marry 
any man who has a heart to defend a wife’s honor and the 
nerve to fire a pistol: every Frenchman has those qualifica- 
tions!’” 

Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emotions ; she 
burst into sobs so vehement, so convulsive, that Madame 
Savarin became alarmed ; but when she attempted to embrace 
and soothe her, Isaura recoiled with a visible shudder, and' 
gasping out, “ Cruel 1” turned to the door, and rushed to her 
own room. 

A few minutes afterwards a maid entered the salon with a 
message to Madame Savarin that Mademoiselle was so unwell 
that she must beg Madame to' excuse her return to the salon. 

Later in the day Mrs. Morley called, but Isaura would not 
see her. 

'Meanwhile poor Bameau was stretched on his sick-bed, and 
in sharp struggle^ between lif^ and death. It is difl&cult tq 
disentangle, one by one, all the threads in a nature so com- 
plex as Rameau’s; but, if we may hazard a conjecture, the 
grief of disappointed loVe was not the immediate cause of his 
illness, and yet it had much to do with it. The goad of 
Isaura’s refusal had driven him into seeking distraction in 
excesses which a stronger frame could not have courted wifcb 
impunity. The man Was thoroughly Parisian in many things, 
but especially in impatience of any trouble. Bid love trouble 


238 


THE PARISIANS. 


him — love could be drowned in absinthe; and too much 
absinthe may be a more immediate cause of congested lungs 
than the love which the absinthe has lulled to sleep. 

His bedside was not watched by hirelings. When first 
taken thus ill — ^too ill to attend to his editorial duties — in- 
formation was conveyed to the publisher of the “ Sens Com- 
mun” and. in consequence of that information, Victor de 
Maul4on came to see the sick man. By his bed he found 
Savarin, who had called, as it were by chance, and seen the 
doctor, who had said, “ It is grave. He must be well nursed.’^ 

Savarin whispered to De Mauleon, “ Shall we call in a 
professional nurse, or a soeur de chariti 

De Maul4on replied, also in whisper, “ Somebody told me 
that the man had a mother.” 

It was true: Savarin had forgotten it. Rameau never 
mentioned his parents — ^he was not proud of them. 

They belonged to a lower class of the bourgeoisie^ retired 
shop-keepers, and a Red Republican is sworn to hate of the 
bourgeoisie, high or low ; while a beautiful young author push- 
ing h^way into the Chauss^e d’ Antin does not proclaim to the 
world that his parents had sold hosiery in the Rue St, Denis. 

Nevertheless Savarin knew that Rameau had such parents 
still living, and took the hint. Two hours afterwards Rameau 
was leaning his burning forehead on his mother’s breast. 

The next morning the doctor said to the mother, “You 
are worth ten of me. If you can stay here we shall pull 
him through.” 

“ Stay here !— my own boy 1” cried indignantly the poor 
mother. 


THE PARISIANS. 


23i^ 


CHAPTEK VIIL 

The day which had inflicted on Isaura so keen an anguish 
was marked by a great trial in the life of Alain de Eoche- 
briant. 

In the morning he received the notice of “ un commande- 
merit tendant d same immohililre^'^ on the part of his cred- 
itor, M. Louvier ; in plain English, an announcement that his 
property at Eochebriant would be put up to public sale on a 
certain day, in case all debts due to the mortgagee were not 
paid before. An hour afterwards came a note from Duplessis 
stating that “ he had returned from Bretagne on the previous 
evening, and would be very happy to see the Marquis de 
Eochebriant before two o’clock, if not inconvenient to call.” 

Alain put the “ commandement^' into his pocket, and re- 
paired to the Hdtel Duplessis. 

The financier received him with very cordial civility. Then 
he began — “ I am happy to say I left your excellent aunt in 
very good health. She honored the letter of introduction 
to her which I owe to your politeness with the most amiable 
hospitalities ; she insisted on my removing from the auherge 
at which I first put up and becoming a guest under your 
venerable roof-tree — a most agreeable lady, and a most inter- 
esting chdteau.^' 

“I fear your accommodation was in striking contrast to 


240 


THE PARISIANS. 


your comforts at Paris ; my chateau is only interesting to an 
antiquarian enamored of ruins.” 

“ Pardon me, ‘ ruins’ is an exaggerated expression. I do 
not say that the chateau does not want some repairs, but they 
would not be costly the outer walls are ^strong enough to 
defy time for centuries to come, and a few internal decora- 
tions and some modern additions of furniture would make 
the old manoir ^a home fib for a prince. I have been over 
the whole estate, too, with the worthy M. Hebert — a superb 
property!” : : 

“ Which M. Louvier appears to appreciate,” said Alain, 
with a somewhat melancholy smile, extending to Duplessis- 
the menacing notice. 

Duplessis glanced at it, and said, dryly, “ M. Louvier knows 
what he is about. But I think we had better put an im- 
mediate stop to formalities which must be painful to a credr 
itor so benevolent. I do not presume to offer to pay the 
interest due, on the security you can give for the repayment. 
If you refused that offer from so old a friend as Lemercier, 
of course you could not accept it from me. I make another 
proposal, to which you can scarcely object. I do not like to 
give my scheming rival on the Bourse the triumph of so pro-- 
foundly planned a speculation. Aid me to defeat him. Let 
me take the mortgage on myself, and become sole mortgagee — 
hush ! — on this condition, that there should be an entire 
union of interests between us two; that I should be at lib- 
erty to make the improvements I desire, and when the im- 
provements be made, there should be a fair arrangement as 
to the proportion of profits due to me as mortgagee and im- 


THE PARISIANS. 


241 


prover, to you as original owner. Attend, my dear Marquis, 
— I am speaking as a mere man of business. I see my way tot 
adding more than a third — I might even say a half — to the 
present revenues of Rochebriant. The woods have been sadly 
neglected ; drainage alone would add greatly to their produce. 
Your orchards might be rendered magnificent supplies to 
Paris with better cultivation. Lastly, I would devote to 
building-purposes or to market-gardens all the lands round 

the two towns of and . I think I can lay my 

hands on suitable speculators for these last experiments. In 
a word, though the market value of Rochebriant, as it now 
stands, would not be equivalent to the debt on it, in five or 
six years it could be made worth — well, I will not say how 
much — but we shall be both well satisfied with the result. 
Meanwhile, if you allow me to find purchasers for your 
timber, and if you will not suffer the Chevalier de Finisterre 
to regulate your expenses, you need have no fear that the 
interest due to me will not be regularly paid, even though I 
shall be compelled, for the first year or two at least, to ask a 
higher rate of interest than Louvier exacted — say a quarter 
per cent, more ; and in suggesting that, you will comprehend 
that this is now a matter of business between us, and not of 
friendship.” 

Alain turned his head aside to conceal his emotion, and then, 
with the quick affectionate impulse of the genuine French 
nature, threw himself on the financier’s breast and kissed him 
on both cheeks. 

“ You save me ! you save the home and tombs of my ances- 
tors ! Thank you I cannot ; but I believe in God — I pray — 
VOL. II.— L 16 


242 


THE PARISIANS. 


will pray for you as for a father ; and if ever,” he hurried on 
in broken words, “ I am mean enough to squander on idle 
luxuries one franc that I should save for the debt due to you, 
chide me as a father would chide a graceless son.” 

Moved as Alain was, Duplessis was moved yet more deeply. 

What father would not be proud of such a son ? Ah, if I 
had such a one ! ” he said softly. Then, quickly recovering 
his wonted composure, he added, with the sardonic smile which 
often chilled his friends and alarmed his foes, “ Monsieur 
Louvier is about to pass that which I ventured to promise 
him, a ‘ mauvais quart-dheure' Lend me that commande- 
ment tendant d saisie. I must be off to my avoui with in- 
structions. If you have no better engagement, pray dine with 
me to-day and accompany Valerie and myself to the opera.” 

I need not say that Alain accepted the invitation. How 
happy Valerie was that evening I 


CHAPTER IX. 

The next day Duplessis was surprised by a visit from M 
Louvier — that magnate of millionaires had never before set 
foot in the house of his younger and less famous rival. 

The burly man entered the room with a face much flushed, 
and with more than his usual mixture of jovial hrusquerie and 
opulent swagger. 

“ Startled to see me, I daresay,” began Louvier, as soon as 
the door was closed. “ I have this morning received a com- 


THE PARISIANS. 


243 


munication from your agent containing a cheque for the interest 
due to me from M. Rochebriant, and a formal notice of your 
intention to pay off the principal on behalf of that popinjay 
prodigal. Though we two have not hitherto been the best 
friends in the world, I thought it fair to a man in your station 
to come to you direct and say, ‘ Cher confrere^ what swindler' 
has bubbled you ? you don’t know the real condition of this 
Breton property, or you would never so throw away your 
millions. The property is not worth the mortgage I have on 
it by 30,000 louis.’ ” 

“ Then, M. Louvier, you will be 30,000 louis the richer if 
I take the mortgage off your hands.” 

“ I can afford the loss — no offense — better than you can ; 
and I may have fancies which I don’t mind paying for, but 
which cannot influence another. See, I have brought with 
me the exact schedule of all details respecting this property. 
You need not question their accuracy ; they have been arranged 
by the Marquis’s own agents, M. Gandrin and M. Hubert. 
They contain, you will perceive, every possible item of revenue, 
down to an apple-tree. Now, look at that, and tell me if you 
are justifled in lending such a sum on such a property.” 

“ Thank you very much for an interest in my affairs that 
I scarcely ventured to expect M. Louvier to entertain ; but I 
see that I have a duplicate of this paper, furnished to me very 
honestly by M. Hebert himself. Besides, I too have fancies 
which I don’t mind paying for, and among them may be a 
fancy for the lands of Bochebriant.” 

“ Look you, Duplessis, when a man like me asks a favor, 
you may be sure that he has the power to repay it. Let me 


244 


THE PARISIANS. 


have my whim here, and ask anything you like from me in 
return !” 

“ DesoU not to oblige you, but this has become not only a 
whim of mine, but a matter of honor ; and honor, you know, 
my dear M. Louvier, is the first principle of sound finance. 
I have myself, after careful inspection of the Rochebriant 
property, volunteered to its owner to advance the money to 
pay off your Jiypothlque ; and what would be said on the Bourse 
if Lucien Duplessis failed in an obligation ?” 

“ I think I can guess what will one day be said of Lucien 
Duplessis if he make an irrevocable enemy of Paul Louvier. 
Corhleu ! mon cher^ a man of thrice your capital, who watched 
every speculation of yours with a hostile eye, might some heau 
jour make even you a bankrupt !” 

“ Forewarned, forearmed 1” replied Duplessis, imperturb- 
ably. “ ‘ Fas est ah hosie docerij — I mean, ‘ It is right to be 
taught by an enemy and I never remember the day when 
you were otherwise, and yet I am not a bankrupt, though I 
receive you in a house which, thanks to you, is so modest in 
point of size !” 

“ Bah ! that was a mistake of mine, and, — ha I ha ! you had 
your revenge there — that forest !” 

“ Well, as a peace-ofiering, I will give you up the forest, and 
content my ambition as a landed proprietor with this bad 
speculation of Bochebriant !” 

“ Confound the forest ! I don’t care for it now I I can sell 
my place for more than it has cost me, to one of your imperial 
favorites. Build a palace in your forest. Let me have Boche- 
briant, and name your terms.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


245 


“ A thousand pardons ! but I have already had the honor to 
inform you that I have contracted an obligation which does 
not allow me to listen to terms.” 

As a serpent that, after all crawlings and windings, rears 
itself on end, Louvier rose, crest erect — 

“ So, then, it is finished. I came here disposed to offer peace 
— you refuse, and declare war.” 

“ Not at all. I do not declare war ; I accept it if forced on 
me.” 

“ Is that your last word, M. Duplessis?” 

“ Monsieur Louvier, it is.” 

“ Bon-jour r' 

And Louvier strode to the door ; here he paused — “ Take 
a day to consider.” 

“ Not a moment.” 

“Your servant. Monsieur, — ^your very humble servant.” 
Louvier vanished. 

Duplessis leaned his large thoughtful forehead on his thin 
nervous hand. “ This loan will pinch me,” he muttered. 
“ I must be very wary now with such a foe. Well, why 
should I care to be rich? Valerie’s doty Valerie’s happiness 
are secured.” • 


246 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTER X. 

Madame Savarin wrote a very kind and very apologetic 
letter to Isaura; but no answer was returned to it. Madame 
Savarin did not venture to communicate to ber husband the 
substance of a conversation which had ended so painfully. 
He had, in theory, a delicacy of tact, which, if he did not 
always exhibit it in practice, made him a very severe critic of 
its deficiency in others. Therefore, unconscious of the ofiense 
given, he made a point of calling at Isaura’s apartments and 
leaving word with her servant that “ he was sure she would 
be pleased to hear M. Rameau was somewhat better, though 
still in danger.” 

It was not till the third day after her interview with 
Madame Savarin that Isaura left her own room, — she did so 
to receive Mrs. Morley. 

The fair American was shocked to see the change in 
Isaura’s countenance. She was very pale, and with that 
indescribable appearance of exhaustion which betrays con- 
tinued want of sleep ; her soft ^eyes were dim, the play of her 
lips was gone, her light step was weary and languid. 

“My poor darling!” cried Mrs. Morley, embracing her, 
“you have indeed been ill! What is the matter? — wbo 
attends you ?” 

“I need no physician: it was but a passing cold — the air 


THE PARISIANS. 


247 


of Paris is very trying. Never mind me, dear — what is the 
last news?” 

Therewith Mrs. Morley ran glibly through the principal 
topics of the hour — the breach threatened between M. Olli- 
vier and his former Liberal partisans ; the tone unexpectedly 
taken by M. de Grirardin ; the speculations as to the result of 
the trial of the alleged conspirators against the Emperor’s 
life, which was fixed to take place towards the end of that 
month of June, — all matters of no slight importance to the 
interests of an empire. Sunk deep into the recesses of her 
fauteuil^ Isaura seemed to listen quietly, till, when a pause 
came, she said, in cold clear tones — 

“ And Mr. Graham Vane — he has refused your invitation ?” 

“ I am sorry to say he has — he is so engaged in London.” 

“I knew he had refused,” said Isaura, with a low bitter 
laugh. 

How ? who told you ?” 

“ My own good sense told me. One may have good sense 
though one is a poor scribbler.” 

“ Don’t talk in that way ; it is beneath you to angle for 
compliments.” 

“ Compliments ! ah ! And so Mr. Vane has refused to 
conie to Paris ; never mind, he will come next year. I shall 
not be in Paris then. Did Colonel Morley see Mr. Vane?” 

Oh, yes ; two or three times.” 

“ He is well ?” 

“ Quite well, I believe — at least Frank did not say to the 
contrary ; but, from what I hear, he is not the person I took 
him for. Many people told Frank that he is much changed 


248 


THE PARISIANS. 


since he came into his fortune ; is gi’own very stingy — quite 
miserly, indeed j declines even a seat in Parliament, because of 
the expense. It is astonishing how money does spoil a man.” 

‘‘ He had come into his fortune when he was here. Money 
had not spoiled him then.” 

Isaura paused, pressing her hands tightly together; then 
she suddenly rose to her feet, the color on her cheek mantling 
and receding rapidly, and, fixing on her startled visitor eyes 
no longer dim, but with something half fierce, hah* imploring 
in the passion of^their gaze, said, “ Your husband spoke of me 
to Mr. Vane: I know he did. What did Mr. Vane answer? 
Do not evade my question. The truth ! the truth ! I only 
ask the truth !” 

“ Give me your hand ; sit here beside me, dearest child.” 

“ Child !-n-no, I am a woman ! — weak as a woman, but 
strong as a woman too ! The truth I” 

Mrs. Morley had come prepared to (^rry out the resolution 
she had formed, and “break” to Isaura “the truth,” that 
which the girl now demanded. But then she had meant to 
break the truth in her own gentle gradual way. Thus sud- 
denly called upon, her courage failed her. She burst into 
tears. Isaura gazed at her dry-eyed. 

“ Your tears answer me. Mr. Vane has heard that I have 
been insulted. A man like him does not stoop to love for a 
woman who has known an insult. I do not blame him ; I 
honor him the more : he is right.” 

“No — no — no! — ^you insulted! Who dared to insult 
you ?” (Mrs. Morley had never heard the story about the 
Russian Prince.) “Mr. Vane spoke to Frank and writes of 


THE PARISIANS. 


249 


you to me as of one whom it is impossible not to admire, to 
respect; but — I cannot say it — ^you will have the truth, — • 
there! read and judge for yourself.” And Mrs. Morley drew 
forth and thrust into Isaura’s hands the letter she had con- 
cealed from her husband. The letter was not very long ; it 
began with expressions of warm gratitude to Mrs. Morley, 
not for her invitation only, but for the interest she had con- 
ceived in his happiness. It then went on thus : — 

“ I join with my whole heart in all that you say, with such 
eloquent justice, of the mental and personal gifts so boun- 
teously lavished by nature on the young lady whom you 
name. 

‘‘No one can feel more sensible than I of the charm of so 
exquisite a loveliness ; no one can more sincerely join in the 
belief that the praise which greets the commencement of her 
career is but the whisper of the praise that will cheer its 
progress with louder and louder plaudits. 

“ He only would be worthy of her hand who, if not equal 
to herself in genius, would feel raised into partnership with 
it by sympathy with its objects and joy in its triumphs. For 
myself, the same pain with which I should have learned she 
had adopted the profession which she originally contemplated, 
saddened and stung me when, choosing a career that confers a 
renown yet more lasting than the stage, she no less left behind 
her the peaceful immunities of private life. Were I even 
free to consult only my own heart in the choice of the one 
sole partner of my destinies (which I cannot at present hon- 
estly say that I am, though I had expected to be so ere this, 
when I last saw you at Paris) ; could I even hope — which I 

L* 


250 


THE PARISIANS. 


have no right to do — that I could chain to myself any private 
portion of thoughts which now flow into the large channels 
by which poets enrich the blood of the world, — still (I say it 
in self-reproach, it may be the fault of my English rearing, it 
may rather be the fault of an egotism peculiar to myselfj — 
still I doubt if I could render happy any woman whose world 
could not be narrowed to the home that she adorned and 
blessed. 

“ And yet not even the jealous tyranny of man’s love could 
dare to say to natures like hers of whom we speak, ‘ Limit to 
the household glory of one the light which genius has placed 
in its firmament for the use and enjoyment of all.’ ” 

“ I thank you so much,” said Isaura, calmly : “ suspense 
makes a woman so weak — certainty so strong.” Mechanic- 
ally she smoothed and refolded the letter — mechanically, but 
with slow, lingering hands; then she extended it to her 
friend, smiling. 

“Nay, will you not keep it yourself?” said Mrs. Morley. 
“ The more you examine the narrow-minded prejudices, the 
English arrogant man’s jealous dread of superiority — nay, of 
equality — in the woman he can only value as he does his 
house or his horse, because she is his exclusive property, the 
more you will be rejoiced to find yourself free fbr a more 
worthy choice. Keep the letter ; read it till you feel for the 
writer forgiveness and disdain.” 

Isaura took back the letter, and leaned her check on her 
hand, looking dreamily into space. It was some moments 
before she replied; and her words then had no reference to 
Mrs. Morley’s consolatory exhortation. 


THE PARISIANS. 


251 


“ He was so pleased wlien lie learned that I renounced the 
career on which I had set my ambition. I thought he would 
have been so pleased when I sought in another career to raise 
myself nearer to his level — I see now how sadly I was mis- 
taken. All that perplexed me before in him is explained. I 
did not guess how foolishly I had deceived myself till three 
days ago, — then I did guess it ; and it was that guess which 
tortured me so terribly that I could not keep my heart to 
myself when I saw you to-day ; in spite of all womanly pride 
it would force its way — to the truth. Hush ! I must tell 
you what was said to me by another friend of mine — a good 
friend, a wise and kind one. Yet I was so angry when she 
said it that I thought I could never see her more.” 

“ My sweet darling ! who was this friend, and what did she 
say to you?” 

“ The friend was Madame Savarin.” 

No woman loves you more except myself — and she said ?” 

“ That she would have suffered no daughter of hers to 
commit her name to the talk of the world as I have done — 
be exposed to the risk of insult as I have been — until she 
had the shelter and protection denied to me. And I, having 
thus overleaped the bound that a prudent mother would pre- 
scribe to her child, have become one whose hand men do not 
seek, unless they themselves take the same roads to notoriety. 
Ho you not think she was right ?” 

Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl, — certainly not 
right. But I do wish that you had the shelter and protection 
which Madame Savarin meant to express ; I do wish that you 
were happily married to one very different from Mr. Vane — 


252 


THE PARISIANS. 


one who would be more proud of your genius than of your 
beauty — one who would say, ‘ My name, safer far in its en- 
during nobility than those that depend on titles and lands — 
which are held on the tenure of the popular breath — must be 
honored by posterity, for she has deigned to make it hers. 
No democratic revolution can disennoble me.’ ” 

“ Ay, ay, you believe that men will be found to think with 
complacency that they owe to a wife a name that they could not 
achieve for themselves. Possibly there are such men. Where ? 
— among those that are already united by sympathies in the 
same callings, the same labors, the same hopes and fears, with 
the women who have left behind them the privacies of home. 
Madame de Grantmesnil was wrong. Artists should wed 
with artists. True — true I” 

Here she passed her hand over her forehead — it was a 
pretty way of hers when seeking to concentrate thought — 
and was silent a moment or so. 

“ Did you ever feel,” she then asked dreamily, “ that there 
are moments in life when a dark curtain seems to fall over 
one’s past that a day before was so clear, so blended with the 
present ? One cannot any longer look behind ; the gaze is 
attracted ■ onward, and a track of fire flashes upon the future, 
— the future which yesterday was invisible. There is a line 
by some English poet — Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, 
but to M. Savarin, and in illustration of his argument that 
the most complicated recesses of thought are best reached by 
the simplest forms of expression. I said to myself, ‘ I will 
study that truth if ever I take to literature as I have taken 
to song;’ and — yes — it was that evening that the ambition 


THE PARISIANS. 


253 


fatal to woman fixed on me its relentless fangs — at Enghien — 
we were on the lake — the sun was setting.” 

“ But you do not tell me the line that so‘ impressed you,” 
said Mrs. Morley, with the woman’s kindly tact. 

“ The line — which line ? Oh, I remember j the line was 
this — 

see as from a tower the end of all.' 


And now — kiss me, dearest — never a word again to me about 
this conversation : never a word about Mr. Vane — the dark 
curtain has fallen on the past.” 


CHAPTEB XL 

Men and women are much more like each other in certain 
large elements of character than is generally supposed, but 
it is that very resemblance which makes their difierences the 
more incomprehensible to each other; just as in politics, 
theology, or that most disputatious of all things disputable, 
metaphysics, the nearer the reasoners approach each other in 
points that to an uncritical bystander seem the most impor- 
tant, the more sure they are to start off in opposite directions 
upon reaching the speck of a pin-prick. 

Now, there are certain grand meeting-places between man 
and woman — the grandest of all is on the ground of love, 
and yet here also is the great field of quarrel. And here the 
teller of a tale such as mine ought, if he is sufiiciently wise 


254 


THE PARISIANS. 


to be bumble, to know that it is almost profanation if, as 
man, be presumes to enter tbe penetralia of a woman’s inner- 
most heart, and repeat, as a man would repeat, all tbe vibra- 
tions of sound wbicb tbe heart of a woman sends forth 
undistinguishable even to her own ear. 

I know Isaura as intimately as if I bad rocked her in her 
cradle, played with her in her childhood, educated and trained 
her in her youth ; and yet I can no more tell you faithfully 
what passed in her mind during the forty-eight hours that 
intervened between her conversation with that American lady 
and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room 
than I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel 
if the sun that his world reflects were blotted out of creation. 

I can only say that when she reappeared in that common- 
place drawing-room world there was a change in her face not 
very perceptible to the ordinary observer. If anything, to his 
eye she was handsomer — the eye was brighter — the com- 
plexion (always lustrous, though somewhat pale, the limpid 
paleness that suits so well with dark hair) was yet more lus- 
trous, — it was flushed into delicate rose hues — hues that still 
better suit with dark hair. What, then, was the change, and 
change not for the better ? The lips once so pensively sweet 
had grown hard ; on the brow that had seemed to laugh when 
the lips did, there was no longer sympathy between brow and 
lip ; there was scarcely seen a fine thread-like^ line that in a 
few years would be a furrow on the space between the eyes ; 
the voice was not so tenderly soft ; the step was haughtier. 
What all such change denoted it is for a woman to decide- — 
I can only guess. In the mean while. Mademoiselle Cicogna 


THE PARISIANS. 


255 


had sent her servant daily to inquire after M. Kameau. That, 
I think, she would have done under any circumstances. 
Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin — made 
it up with her — sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss. 
That, too, under any circumstances, I think, she would have 
done — under some circumstances the kiss might have been 
less cold. 

There was one thing unwonted in her habits. I mention 
it, though it is only a woman who can say if it means anything 
worth noticing. 

For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grant- 
mesnil unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was 
connected the whole of her innermost life — from the day 
when the lonely desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty 
thoroughfares of life, gleams of the fairy-land in poetry and 
art — onward through her restless, dreamy, aspiring youth — 
onward — onward — till now, through all that constitutes the 
glorious reality that we call romance. 

Never before had she left for two days unanswered letters 
which were to her as Sibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte 
yearning for solutions to enigmas suggested whether by the 
world without or by the soul within. For six days Madame 
de Grantmesnil’s letter remained unanswered, unread, neglected, 
thrust out of sight ; just as, when some imperious necessity 
compels us to grapple with a world that is, we cast aside the 
romance which in our holiday hours had beguiled us to a 
world with which we have interests and sympathies no more. 


256 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTER XIL 

Gustave recovered, but slowly. The physician pronounced 
him out of all immediate danger, but said frankly to him, and 
somewhat more guardedly to his parents, “ There is ample 
cause to beware.” “ Look you, my young friend,” he added 
to Rameau, “ mere brain-work seldom kills a man once ac- 
customed to it, like you ; but heart-work, and stomach-work, 
and nerve- work, added to brain-work, may soon consign to the 
coffin a frame ten times more robust than yours. Write as 
much as you will — ^that is your vocation ; but it is not your 
vocation to drink absinthe — ^to preside at orgies in the Maison 
Doree. Regulate yourself, and not after the fashion of the 
fabulous Don Juan. Marry — live soberly and quietly — and 
you may survive the grandchildren of mveiirs. Go on as you 
have done, and before the year is out you are in Pere la 
Chaise." 

Rameau listened languidly, but with a profound conviction 
that the physician thoroughly understood his case. 

Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire for orgies at 
the Maison Doree; with parched lips thirsty for innocent 
tisane of lime-blossoms, the thought of absinthe was as odious 
to him as the liquid fire of Phlegethon. If ever sinner became 
suddenly convinced that there was a good deal to be said in 
favor of a moral life, that sinner, at the moment I speak of, 
was Gustave Pvameau. Certainly a moral life — “ domus et 


THE PARISIANS. 


257 


placens vxor '' — was essential to the poet who, aspiring to 
immortal glory, was condemned to the ailments of a very 
perishable frame. 

“ Ah,” he murmured plaintively to himself, “ that girl 
Isaura can have no true sympathy with genius ! It is no 
ordinary man that she will kill in mel” 

And, so murmuring, he fell asleep. When he woke and 
found his head pillowed on his mother’s breast, it was much 
as a sensitive, delicate man may wake after having drunk too 
much the night before. Repentant, mournful, maudlin, he 
began to weep, and in the course of his weeping he confided 
to his mother the secret of his heart. 

Isaura had refused him — that refusal had made him des- 
perate. “ Ah ! with Isaura how changed would be his habits I 
how pure ! how healthful I” 

His mother listened fondly, and did her best to comfort 
him and cheer his drooping spirits. 

She told him of Isaura’s messages of inquiry duly twice a 
day. Rameau, who knew more about women in general, and 
Isaura in particular, than his mother conjectured, shook his 
head mournfully. “ She could not do less,” he said. “ Has 
no one offered to do more?” — he thought of Julie when he 
asked that. Madame Rameau h^itated. 

These poor Parisians ! it is the mode to preach against them ; 
and before my book closes I shall have to preach — no, not to 
preach, but to imply — plenty of faults to consider and amend. 
Meanwhile, I try my best to Cake them, as the philosophy of 
life tells us to take other people, for what they are. 

I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian hour- 
VoL. II. 17 


258 


THE PARISIANS. 


geoisie are as bad as they are said to be in French novels. 
Madame Rameau is not an uncommon type of her class. She 
had been, when she first married, singularly handsome — it was 
from her that Gustave inherited his beauty ; and her husband 
was a very ordinary type of the French shop-keeper — very 
plain, by no means intellectual, but gay, good-humored, de- 
votedly attached to his wife, and with implicit trust in her 
conjugal virtue. Never was trust better placed. There was 
not a happier or a more faithful couple in the quartier in 
which they resided. Madame Rameau hesitated when her 
boy, thinking of Julie, asked if no one had done more than 
send to inquire after him as Isaura had done. 

After that hesitating pause she said, “ Yes— a young lady 
calling herself Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to install 
herself here as your nurse. When I said, ‘ But I am his 
mother — he needs no other nurse,’ she would have retreated, 
and looked ashamed — poor thing ! I don’t blame her if she 
loved my son. But, my son, I say this, — if you love her, 
don’t talk to me about that Mademoiselle Cicogna ; and if you 
love Mademoiselle Cicogna, why, then your father will take 
care that the poor girl who loved you, not knowing that you 
loved another, is not left to the temptation of penury.” 

Rameau’s pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer. 
Julie! the resplendent Julie! — true, only a ballet-dancer, but 
whose equipage in the Bois had once been the envy of duch- 
esses! — Julie! who had sacrificed fortune for his sake who, 

freed from him, could have millionaires again at her feet ! 

Julie! to be saved from penury, as a shop-keeper would save 
an erring nurse-maid!— Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had 


THE PARISIANS. 


259 


written to him, the day before his illness, in a pen dipped, 
not in ink, but in blood from a vein she had opened in her 
arm, “ Traitor I I have not seen thee for three days. Dost 
thou dare to love another ? If so, — I care not how thou attempt 
to conceal it, — woe to her ! Ingrat ! woe to thee ! Love is 
not love, unless, when betrayed by love, it appeals to death. 
Answer me, quick — quick ! Julie.” 

Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groaned. Certainly 
his mother was right — he ought to get rid of Julie ; but he 
did not clearly see how Julie was to be got rid of. He replied 
to Madame Eameau peevishly, “ Don’t trouble your head 
about Mademoiselle Caumartin ; she is in no want of money. 
Of course, if I could hope for Isaura — but, alas ! I dare not 
hope. Give me my ^fsane.” 

When the doctor called next day, he looked grave, and, 
drawing Madame Eameau into the next room, he said, “We 
are not getting on so well as I had hoped ; the fever is gone, 
but there is much to apprehend from the debility left behind. 
His spirits are sadly depressed.” Then added the doctor 
pleasantly, and with that wonderful insight into our complex 
humanity in which physicians excel poets, and in which 
Parisian physicians are not excelled by any physicians in the 
world, “ Can’t you think of any bit of good news ? — that ‘ M. 
Thiers raves about your son’s last poem’ — that ‘ it is a ques- 
tion among the Academicians between him and Jules Janin’? 

or that ‘ the beautiful Duchesse de has been placed in a 

lunatic-asylum because she has gone mad for love of a certain 
young Eed Eepublican whose name begins with E’ ? — can’t 


2G0 


THE PARISIANS. 


you think of any bit of similar good news? If you can, it 
will be a tonic to the relaxed state of your dear boy’s amour- 
propre, compared to which all the drugs in the Pharmacopoeia 
are moonshine and water ; and, meanwhile, be sure to remove 
him to your own house, and out of the reach of his giddy 
young friends, as soon as you possibly can. ” 

When that great authority thus left his patient’s case in 
the hands of the mother, she said, “ The boy shall be saved.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

IsAURA was seated beside the Venosta, to whom,, of late, 
she seemed to cling with greater fondness than ever, — work- 
ing at some piece of embroidery — a labor from which she had 
been estranged for years ; but now she had taken writing, 
reading, music, into passionate disgust. Isaura was thus 
seated, silently intent upon her work, and the Venosta in full 
talk, when the servant announced Madame Rameau. 

The name startled both ; the Venosta had never heard that 
the poet had a mother living, and immediately jumped to the 
conclusion that Madame Rameau must be a wife he had 
hitherto kept unrevealed. And when a woman, still very 
handsome, with a countenance grave and sad, entered the salon, 
the Venosta , murmured, “ The husband’s perfidy reveals itself 
on a wife’s face,” and took out her handkerchief in preparation 
for sympathizing tears. 

Mademoiselle,” said the visitor, halting, with eyes fixed 


THE PARISIANS. 


261 


on Isaura, “ pardon my intrusion — my son has the honor to 
be known to you. Every one who knows him must "share 
in my sorrow — so young, so promising, and in such danger — 
my poor boy !” Madame Eameau stopped abruptly. Her 
tears forced their way ; she turned aside to conceal them. 

In her twofold condition of being — womanhood and genius 
— Isaura was too largely endowed with that quickness of 
sympathy which distinguishes woman from man, and genius 
from talent, not to be wondrously susceptible to pity. 

Already she had wound her arm round the grieving mother, 
already drawn her to the seat from .which she herself had 
risen, and, bending over her, had said some words — true, con- 
ventional enough in themselves, but cooe(b forth in a voice 
the softest I ever expect to hear, save in dreams, on this side 
of the grave. 

Madame Kameau swept her hand over her eyes, glanced 
round the room, and, noticing the Venosta, in dressing-robe 
and slippers, staring with those Italian eyes, in seeming so 
quietly innocent, in reality so searchingly shrewd, she whis- 
pered pleadingly, “ May I speak to you a few minutes alone ?” 
This was not a request that Isaura could refuse, though she 
was embarrassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame 
Rameau’s object in asking it : accordingly, she led her visitor 
into the adjoining room, and, making an apologetic sign fo the 
Venosta, closed the door. 


262 


THE PARISIANS. 


OHAPTER XIV. 

When they were alone, Madame Rameau took Isaura’s 
hand in both her own, and, gazing wistfully into her face, said, 
“ No wonder you are so loved : yours is the beauty that sinks 
into the heart and rests there. I prize my boy more, now 
that I have seen you. But oh. Mademoiselle ! pardon me — 
do not withdraw your hand — pardon the mother who comes 
from the sick-bed of her only son and asks if you will assist 
to save him ! A word from you is life or death to him !” 

“ Nay, nay, do not speak thus, Madame : your son knows 
how much I value, how sincerely I return, his friendship ; 

but — but,” she paused a moment, and continued sadly and 

© . 

with tearful eyes, “ I have no heart to give to him — to any 
one.” 

“ I do not — I would not if I dared — ask what it would be 
violence to yourself to promise. I do not ask you to bid me 
return to my son and say, ‘ Hope and recover;’ but let me take 
some healing message from your lips. If I understand your 
words rightly, I at least may say that you do not give to 
another the hopes you deny to him ?” 

“ So far you understand me rightly, Madame. It has been 
said that romance-writers give away so much of their hearts 
to heroes or heroines of their own creation that they leave 
nothing worth the giving to human beings like themselves. 
Perhaps it is so ; yet, Madame,” added Isaura, with a smile 


THE PARISIANS. 


263 


of exquisite sweetness in its melanclioly, “ I have heart enough 
left to feel for you.” 

Madame Rameau was touched. “ Ah, Mademoiselle, I do 
not believe in the saying you have quoted. But I must not 
abuse your goodness by pressing further upon you subjects 
from which you shrink. Only one word more: you know 
that my husband and I are but quiet tradesfolk, not in the 
society, nor aspiring to it, to which my son’s talents have 
raised himself ; yet dare I ask that you will not close here 
the acquaintance that I have obtruded on you? — dare I ask 
that I may now and then call on you — that now and then I 
may see you at my own home ? Believe that I would not 
here ask anything which your own mother would disapprove 
if she overlooked disparities of station. Humble as our home 
is, slander never passed its- threshold.” 

“ Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our 
Italian tongue I call mother, can but feel honored and grate- 
ful whenever it pleases you to receive visits from us.” 

“ It would be a base return for such gracious compliance 
with my request if I concealed from you the reason why I 
pray Heaven to bless you for that answer. The physician 
says that it may be long before my son is sufficiently con- 
valescent to dispense with a mother’s care and resume his 
former life and occupation in the great world. It is every- 
thing for us if we can coax him into coming under our own 
roof-tree. This is difficult to do. It is natural for a young 
man launched into the world to like his own chez hi. Then 
what will happen to Grustave ? He, lonely and heart-stricken, 
will ask friends, young as himself, but far stronger, to come 


264 


THE PARISIANS. 


and cheer him ; or he will seek to distract his thoughts by 
the overwork of his brain : in either case he is doomed. But 
I have stronger motives yet to fix him awhile at our hearth. 
This is just the moment, once lost never to be regained, when 
soothing companionship, gentle reproachless advice, can fix 
him lastingly in the habits and modes of life which will 
banish all fears of his future from the hearts of his parents. 
You at least honor him with friendship, with kindly interest 
— you at least would desire to wean him from all that a friend 
may disapprove or lament — a creature whom Providence 
meant to be good and perhaps great. If I say to him, ‘ It 
will be long before you can go out and see your friends, but 
at my house your friends shall come and see you — among 
them Signora V enosta and Mademoiselle Cicogna will now and 
then drop in,’ my victory is gained, and my son is saved.” 

“ Madame,” said Isaura, half sobbing, “ what a blessing to 
have a mother like you ! Love so noble ennobles those who 
hear its voice. Tell your son how ardently I wish him to be 
well, and to fulfill more than the promise of his genius ; tell 
him also this — how I envy him his mother.” 


CHAPTEE XY. 

It needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent 
reader, be thou man or woman — but more especially woman — 
of the consequences, following each other, as wave follows 
wave, in a tide, that resulted from the interview with which 


THE PARISIANS. 


265 


my last chapter closed. Grustave is removed to his parents’ 
house ; he remains for weeks confined within-doors, or, on 
sunny days, taken an hour or so. in his own carriage, drawn 
by the horse bought from Eochebriant, into by-roads remote 
from the fashionable world ; Isaura visits his mother, liking, 
respecting, influenced by her more and more ; in those visits 
she sits beside the sofa on which Eameau reclines. Gradu- 
ally, gently — more and more by his mother’s lips — is im- 
l)ressed on her the belief that it is in her power to save a 
human life, and to animate its career towards those goals 
which are never based wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes 
of genius, or perhaps in tlie yet more upward vision of pure- 
souled believing woman. 

And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages 
of convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every 
step in his progress — seems so gently softened in character — 
seems so refined from the old aflfectations, so ennobled above 
the old cynicism — and, above all, so needing her presence, so 
sunless without it, that — well, need I finish the sentence ? — 
the reader will complete what I leave unsaid. 

Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at 
Madame Kameau’s with the knowledge that her hand was 
pledged, her future life disposed of, and that, escaping from 
the Venosta, whom she so fondly, and in her hunger for a 
mother’s love, called Madre^ the girl shut herself up in her 
own room with locked doors. 

Ah, poor child! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate 
image I feel myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this 
page in the purity of its outlines and the blended softnesses 
VoL. II. — M 


266 


THE PARISIANS. 


of its hues — thou who, when saying things serious in the 
words men use, saidst them with a seriousness so charming 
and with looks so feminine — thou, of whom no man I ever 
knew was quite worthy — ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I 
see thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal 
room ! hast thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into 
the cluster of all those commonplace girls whose lips have 
said “Ay” when their hearts said. “No”? — thou, 0 brilliant 
Isaura ! thou, 0 poor motherless child ! • 

She had sunk into her chair — her own favorite chair, — 
the covering of it had been embroidered by Madame de 
Grantmesnil and bestowed on her as a birthday present last 
year — the year in which she had first learned what it is to 
love — the year in which she had first learned what it is to 
strive for fame. And somehow, uniting, as many young people 
do, love and fame in dreams of the future, that silken seat 
had been to her as the Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian : 
she had taken to it, as it were intuitively, in all those hours, 
whether of joy or sorrow, when youth seeks to prophesy, and 
does but dream. 

There she sat now, in a sort of stupor — a sort of dreary 
bewilderment — the illusion of the Pythian gone, desire of 
dream and of prophecy alike extinct — pressing her hands 
together, and muttering to herself, “ What has happened ? — 
what have I. done ?” 

Three hours later you would not have recognized the same 
face that you see now. For then the bravery, the honor, 
the loyalty of the girl’s nature had asserted their com- 
mand. Her promise had been given to one man — it could 


THE PARISIANS. 


267 


not be recalled. Thought itself of any other man must be 
banished. On her hearth lay ashes and tinder — the last re- 
mains of every treasured note from Graham Vane; of the 
hoarded newspaper extracts that contained his name; of 
the dry treatise he had published, and which had made 
the lovely romance-writer first desire “to know something 
about politics.” Ay, if the treatise had been upon fox- 
hunting, she would have desired “ to know something about” 
that! Above all, yet distinguishable from the rest, as the 
sparks still upon stem and leaf here and there faintly glowed 
and twinkled, the withered flowers which recorded that happy 
hour in the arbor, and the walks of the forsaken garden — 
the hour in which she had so blissfully pledged herself to 
renounce that career in art wherein fame would have been 
secured, but which would not have united Fame with Love — 
in dreams evermore over now. 


BOOIC 221. 


CHAPTEH 1. 

Graham Vane had heard nothing for months from M. 
Renard, when one morning he received the letter I translate : — 


“ Monsieur, — I am happy to inform you that I have at 
last obtained one piece of information which may lead to a 
more important discovery. When we parted after our fruit- 
less research in Vienna, we had both concurred in the per- 
suasion that, for some reason known only to the two ladies 
themselves, Madame Marigny and Madame Duval had ex- 
changed names — that it was Madame Marigny who had 
deceased in the name of Madame Duval, and Madame Duval 
who survived in that of Marigny. 

“ It was clear to me that the heau Monsieur who had visited 
the false Duval must have been cognizant of this exchange of 
name, and that, if his name and whereabouts could be ascer- 
tained, he, in all probability, would know what had become 
of the lady who is the object of our research ; and after the 
lapse of so many years he would probably have very slight 
motive to preserve that concealment of facts which might, no 
doubt, have been convenient at the time. The lover of the 
soi-disant Mademoiselle Duval was, by such accounts as we 
could gain, a man of some rank — ^very possibly a married man ; 
and the liaison^ in short, was one of those which, while they 
last, necessitate precautions and secrecy. 

“ Therefore, dismissing all attempts at further trace of the 
268 


THE PARISIANS. 


269 


missing lady, I resolved to return to Vienna as soon as tlie 
business that recalled me to Paris was concluded, and devote 
myself exclusively to the search after the amorous and mys- 
terious Monsieur. 

“ I did not state this determination to you, because possibly 
I might be in error — or, if not in error, at least too sanguine 
in my expectations — and it is best to avoid disappointing an 
honorable client. 

“ One thing was clear, that at the time of the soi-disant 
Duval’s decease the beau Monsieur was at Vienna. 

“ It appeared also tolerably clear that when the lady friend 
of the deceased quitted Munich so privately, it was to Vienna 
she repaired ; and from Vienna comes the letter demanding 
the certificates of Madame Duval’s death.. Pardon me if I 
remind you of all these circumstances, no doubt fresh in your 
recollection. I repeat them in order to justify the conclusions 
to which they led me. 

“ I could not, however, get permission to absent myself 
from Paris for the time I might require, till the end of last 
April. I had meanwhile sought all private means of ascer- 
taining what Frenchmen of rank and station were in that 
capital in the autumn of 1849*. Among the list of the very few 
such Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be the 
mysterious Achille — Achille was, indeed, his nom de hajpteme. 

“ A man of intrigue — d bonnes fortunes — of lavish expendi- 
ture withal ; very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding any 
petty scandals by which it might be lowered ; just the man 
who, in some passing affair of gallantry with a lady of doubt- 
ful repute, would never have signed his titular designation to 
a letter, and would have kept himself as much incognito as 
he could. But this man was dead — had been dead some 
years. He had not died at Vienna — never visited that capital 
for some years before his death. He was then, and had long 
been, the ami de la maison of one of those grandes dames of 


270 


THE PARISIANS. 


whose intimacy grands seigneurs are not ashamed. They parade 
there the bonnes fortunes they conceal elsewhere. Monsieur and 
the grande dame were at Baden when tlie former died. Now, 
Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always 
to have a confidential Leporello. If I could find Leporello 
alive, I might learn the secrets not to be extracted from a 
Don Juan defunct. I ascertained, in truth, both at Vienna, 
to which I first repaired in order to verify the renseignements 
I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to which I then bent 
my way, that this brilliant noble had a favorite valet who had 
lived with him from his youth — an Italian, who had con- 
trived in the course of his service to lay by savings enough to 
set up a hotel somewhere in Italy, supposed to be Pisa. To 
Pisa I repaired, but the man had left some years ; his hotel 
had not prospered — he had left in debt. No one could say 
what had become of him. At last, after a long and tedious 
research, I found him installed as manager of a small hotel at 
Genoa — a pleasant fellow enough ; and, after friendly inter- 
course with him (of course I lodged at his hotel), I easily led 
him to talk of his earlier life and adventures, and especially 
of his former master, of whose splendid career in the army 
of ^ La Belle Deessd he was not a little proud. It was not 
very easy to get him to the particular subject in question. 
In fact, the affair with the poor false Duval had been so brief 
and undistinguished an episode in his master’s life that it was 
not without a strain of memory that he reached it. 

“ By little and little, however, in the course of two or 
three evenings, and by the aid of many flasks of Orviette and 
bottles of Lacrima (wines, Monsieur, that I do not commend 
to any one who desires to keep his stomach sound and his 
secrets safe), I gathered these particulars. 

“ Our Don Juan, since the loss of a wife in the first year of 
marriage, had rarely visited Paris, where he had a domicile— 
bis ancestral hotel there he had sold. 


THE PARISIANS. 


271 


“ But, happening to visit that capital of Europe a few 
months before we come to our dates at Aix-la-Chapelle, he 
made acquaintance with Madame Marigny, a natural daughter 
of high-placed *parents, by whom, of course, she had never 
been acknowledged, but who had contrived that she should 
receive a good education at a convent, and on leaving it also 
contrived that an old soldier of fortune — which means an 
officer without fortune — who had served in Algiers with some 
distinction, should offer her his hand and add the modest dot 
they assigned her to his yet more modest income. They con- 
trived also that she should understand the offer must be ac- 
cepted. Thus Mademoiselle ‘ Quelgue chosd became Madame 
Marigny, and she, on her part, contrived that a year or so 
later she should be left a widow. After her marriage, of 
course, the parents washed their hands of her — they had done 
their duty. At the time Don Juan made this lady’s acquaint- 
ance, nothing could be said against her character; but the 
milliners and butchers had begun to imply that they would 
rather have her money than trust to her character. Don Juan 
fell in love with her, satisfied the immediate claims of milliner 
and butcher, and when they quitted Paris it was agreed that 
they should meet later at Aix-la-Chapelle. But when he re- 
sorted to that sultry and, to my mind, unalluring spa, he was 
surprised by a line from her saying that she had changed her 
name of Marigny for that of Duval. 

I recollect,’ said Leporello, ‘ that two days afterwards my 
master said to me, “ Caution and secrecy. Don’t mention my 
name at the house to which I may send you with any note for 
Madame Duval. I don’t announce my name when I call. 
La petite Marigny has exchanged her name for that of Louise 
Duval ; and I find that there is a Louise Duval here, her friend, 
who is niece to a relation of my own, and a terrible relation 
to quarrel with — a dead shot and unrivaled swordsman — 
Victor de Mauleon.” My master was brave enough, but he 


272 


THE PARISIANS. 


enjoyed life, and lie did not think la petite Marigny worth 
being killed for.’ 

“ Leporello remembered very little of what followed. All 
he did remember is that Don Juan, when at Vienna, «aid to 
him one morning, looking less gay than usual, ‘ It is finished 
with la petite Marigny — she is no more.’ Then he ordered 
his bath, wrote a note, and said, with tears in his eyes, ‘ Take 
this to Mademoiselle Celeste ; not to be compared to la petite 
Marigny ; but la petite Celeste is still alive.’ Ah, Monsieur ! 
if only any man in France could be as proud of his ruler 
as that Italian was of my countryman ! Alas ! we French- 
men are all made to command — or at least we think ourselves 
so — and we are insulted by one who says to us, ‘ Serve and 
obey.’ Nowadays in France we find all Don Juans and no 
Leporellos. 

“ After strenuous exertions upon my part to recall to Le- 
porello’s mind the important question whether he had ever 
seen the true Duval, passing under the name of Marigny — 
whether she had not presented herself to his master at Vienna 
or elsewhere — he rubbed his forehead, and drew from it these 
reminiscences : 

“ ‘ On the day that his Excellency,’ — Leporello generally 
so styled his master — ‘ Excellency,’ as you are aware, is the 
title an Italian would give to Satan if taking his wages, — ‘ told 
me that la petite Marigny was no more, he had received pre- 
viously a lady veiled and mantled, whom I did not recognise 
as any one I had seen before, but I noticed her way of carry- 
ing herself — haughtily — her head thrown back ; and I thought 
to myself. That lady is one of his grandes dames. She did 
call again two or three times, never announcing her name ; 
then she did not reappear. She might be Madame Duval— 
I can’t say.’ 

“ ‘ But did you never hear his Excellency speak of the real 
Duval after that time ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


273 


“ ‘ No — non mi ricordo — I don’t remember.’ 

“ ‘ Nor of some living Madame Marigny, though the real 
one was dead ?’ 

‘ Stop, I do recollect ; not that he ever named such a 
person to me, but that I have posted letters for him to a 
Madame Marigny — oh, yes 1 even years after the said petite 
Marigny was dead ; and once I did venture to say, “ Pardon 
me, Excellenza, but may I ask if that poor lady is really 
dead, since I have to prepay this letter to her?” “Oh,” 
said he, “ Madame Marigny ! Of course the one you 
know is dead, but there are others of the same name ; 
this lady is of my family. Indeed, her house, though noble 
in itself, recognizes the representative of mine as its head, and 
I am too hon prince not to acknowledge and serve any one 
who branches out of my own tree.” ’ 

“ A day after this last conversation on the subject, Leporello 
said to me, ‘ My friend, you certainly have some interest in 
ascertaining what became of the lady who took the name of 
Marigny.’ (I state this frankly. Monsieur, to show how diffi- 
cult even for one so prudent as I am to beat about a bush 
long but what you let people know the sort of bird you are 
in search of.) 

“ ‘ Well,’ said I, ‘ she does interest me. I knew something 
of that Victor de Mauleon whom his Excellency did not 
wish to quarrel with ; and it would be a kindly act to her 
relation if one could learn what became of Louise Duval.’ 

“ ‘ I can put you on the way of learning all that his Ex- 
cellency was likely to have known of her through correspond- 
ence. I have often heard him quote with praise a saying so 
clever that it might have been Italian — “ Never write, never 
burn that is, never commit yourself by a letter — keep all 
letters that could put others in your power. All the letters 
he received were carefully kept and labeled. I sent them to 
his son in four large trunks. His son, no doubt, has them stiih’ 
M* 18 


274 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Now, however, I have exhausted my budget. I arrived 
at Paris last night. I strongly advise you to come hither 
at once, if you still desire to prosecute your search. 

“ You, Monsieur, can do what I could not venture to do : 
you can ask the son of Don Juan if amid the correspondence 
of his father, which he may have preserved, there be any 
signed Marigny or Duval — any, in short, which can throw 
light on this very obscure complication of circumstances. A 
grand seigneur would naturally be more complaisant to a 
man of your station than he would be to an agent of police. 
Don Juan’s son, inheriting his father’s title, is Monsieur le 
Marquis de Rochebriant ; and permit me to add that at this 
moment, as the journals doubtless inform you, all Paris re- 
sounds with the rumor of coming war, and Monsieur de 
Rochebriant — who is, as I have ascertained, now in Paris — ■ 
it may be difficult to find anywhere on earth a month or 
two hence. I have the honor, with profound consideration, 
etc., etc. 

“I. Renard.” 

The day after the receipt of this letter Graham Vane was 
in Paris. 


CHAPTER II. 

Among things indescribable is that which is called “agi- 
tation” in Paris — “agitation” without riot or violence — 
showing itself by no disorderly act, no turbulent outburst. 
Perhaps the cafes are more crowded ; passengers in the streets 
stop each other more often, and converse in small knots and 
groups ; yet, on the whole, there is little externally to show 
how loudly the heart of Paris is beating. A traveler may be 


THE PARISIANS. 


275 


passing through quiet landscapes, unconscious that a great 
battle is going on some miles off, but if he will stop and put 
his ear to the ground he will recognize, by a certain inde- 
scribable vibration, the voice of the cannon. 

But at Paris an acute observer need not stop and put his 
ear to the ground; he feels within himself a vibration— a 
mysterious inward sympathy which communicates to the in- 
dividual a conscious thrill — when the passions of the multi- 
tude are stirred, no matter how silently. 

Tortoni’s cafe, was thronged when Duplessis and Frederic 
Lemercier entered it ; it was in vain to order breakfast ; no 
table was vacant, either within the rooms or under the awn- 
ings without. 

But they could not retreat so quickly as they had entered. 
On catching sight of the financier, several men rose and gath- 
ered round him, eagerly questioning — 

“ What do you think, Buplessis ? Will any insult to 
France put a drop of warm blood into the frigid veins of that 
miserable Ollivier?” 

“ It is not yet clear that France has been insulted, Mes- 
sieurs,” replied Buplessis, phlegmatically. 

“ Bah 1 Not insulted ! The very nomination of a Hohen- 
zollern to the crown of Spain was an insult — what would you 
have more?” 

“ I tell you what it is, Buplessis,” said the Vicomte de 
Br4ze, whose habitual light good temper seemed exchanged 
for insolent swagger — “ I tell you what it is, your friend the 
Emperor has no more courage than a chicken. He is gi’own 
old and infirm and lazy ; he knows that he can’t even mount 


276 


THE PARISIANS. 


on horseback. But if, before this day week, be has not de- 
clared war on the Prussians, he will be lucky if he can get 
off as quietly as poor Louis Philippe did 'under shelter of his 
umbrella and ticketed ‘ Schmidt.’ Or could you not, M. Du- 
plessis, send him back to London in a bill of exchange?” 

“ For a man of your literary repute, M. le Vicomte,” said 
Duplessis, “ you indulge in a strange confusion of metaphors. 
But, pardon me, I came here to breakfast, and I cannot re- 
main to quarrel. Come, Lemercier, let us take our chance of 
a cutlet at the Trois Frlresy 

“ Fox, Fox,” cried Lemercier, whistling to a poodle that 
had followed him into the cq/e, and, frightened by the sudden 
movement and loud voices of the habitues, had taken refuge 
under the table. 

“ Your dog poltron,^' said Be Breze ; ‘‘ call him Nap.” 

At this stroke of humor there was a general laugh, in the 
midst of which Duplessis escaped, and Frederic, having dis- 
covered and caught his dog, followed with that animal ten- 
derly clasped in his arms. “ I would not lose Fox for a gi-eat 
deal,” said Lemercier, with effusion; “a pledge of love and 
fidelity from an English lady the most distinguished : the lady 
left me — the dog remains.” 

Duplessis smiled grimly : “ What a thorough-bred Parisian 
you are, my dear Frederic ! I believe if the trump of the 
last angel were sounding, the Parisians would be divided into 
two sets ; one would be singing the Marseillaise and parading 
the red flag ; the other would be shrugging their shoulders 
and saying, ‘ Bah ! as if le Bon Dieu would have the bad taste 
to injure Paris— the Seat of the Graces, the School of the 


THE PARISIANS. 


277 


Arts, the Fountain of Reason, the Eye of the AVorld ; and so 
be found by the destroying angel caressing poodles and making 
hmis mots about les femmes'"' 

“ And quite right, too,” said Lemercier, complacently. 
“ What other people in the world could retain lightness of 
heart under circumstances so unpleasant ? But why do you 
take things so solemnly ? Of course there will be war — idle 
now to talk of explanations and excuses. When a French- 
man says, ‘ I am insulted,’ he is not going to be told that he 
is not insulted. He means fighting, and not apologizing. But 
what if there be war? Our brave soldiers beat the Prussians 
— take the Rhine — return to Paris covered with laurels ; a 
new Boulevard de Berlin eclipses the Boulevard Sebastopol. 
By the way, Duplessis, .a Boulevard de Berlin will be a good 
speculation — ^better than the Rue de Louvier. Ah ! is not 
that my English friend Orarm Yarn?” Here, quitting the 
arm of Duplessis, Lemercier stopped a gentleman who was 
about to pass him unnoticing. “ Bon-jour^ mon ami ! how 
long have you been at Paris ?” 

“ I only arrived last evening,” answered Graham; “ and my 
stay may be so short that it is a piece of good luck, my dear 
Lemercier, to meet with you and exchange a cordial shake of 
the hand.” 

“ We are just going to breakfast at the Trois Frhres — Du- 
plessis and I — pray join us.” 

“ With great pleasure — ah, M. Duplessis, I shall be glad 
to hear from you that the Emperor will be firm enough to 
check the advances of that martial fever which, to judge by 
the persons I meet, seems to threaten delirium.” 


278 


THE PARISIANS. 


Duplessis looked very keenly at Graham’s face, as he 
replied slowly, ‘‘ The English, at least, ought to know that 
when the Emperor by his last reforms resigned his personal 
authority for constitutional monarchy, it ceased to be a ques- 
tion whether he could or could not be firm in matters that 
belong to the Cabinet and the Chambers. I presume that if 
Monsieur Gladstone advised Queen Victoria to declare war 
upon the Emperor of Russia, backed by a vast majority in 
Parliament, you would think me very ignorant of constitu- 
tional monarchy and parliamentary government if I said, ‘ I 
hope Queen Victoria will resist that martial fever.’ ” 

“ You rebuke me very fairly, M. Duplessis, if you can show 
me that the two cases are analogous ; but we do not under- 
stand in England that, despite his last reforms, the Emperor 
has so abnegated his individual ascendency that his will, 
clearly and resolutely expressed, would not prevail in his 
Council and silence opposition in the Chambers, Is it so? 
I ask for information.” 

The three men were walking on towards the Palais Royal 
side by side while this conversation proceeded. 

“ That all depends,” replied Duplessis, “ upon what may 
be the increase of popular excitement at Paris. If it slackens, 
the Emperor, no doubt, could turn to wise account that favor- 
able pause in the fever. But if it continues to swell, and 
Paris cries ‘ War,’ in a voice as loud as it cried to Louis 
Philippe ‘ Revolution,’ do you think that the Emperor could 
impose on his ministers the wisdom of peace ? His ministers 
would be too terrified by the clamor to undertake the respon- 
sibility of opposing it— they would resign. Where is the 


THE PARISIANS. 


279 


Emperor to find another Cabinet ? — a peace Cabinet ? What 
and who are the orators for peace ? — what a handful ! — who ? 
Gambetta, Jules Favre, avowed Republicans. Would they 
even accept the post of ministers to Louis Napoleon? If 
they did, would not their first step be the abolition of the 
Empire ? Napoleon is therefore so far a constitutional mon- 
arch in the same sense as Queen Victoria, that the popular 
will in the country (and in France in such matters Paris is 
the country) controls the Chambers, controls the Cabinet ; and 
against the Cabinet the Emperor could not contend. I say 
nothing of the army — a power in France unknown to you in 
England — which would certainly fraternize with no peace party. 
If war is proclaimed, let England blame it if she will — she 
can’t lament it more than I should : but let England blame 
the nation; let her blame, if she please, the form of the 
government, which rests upon popular suffrage ; but do not let 
her blame our sovereign more than the French would blame 
her own if compelled by the conditions on which she holds 
her crown to sign a declaration of war, which vast majorities 
in a Parliament just elected, and a Council of Ministers whom 
she could not practically replace, enforced upon her will.” 

“Your observations, M. Duplessis, impress me strongly, 
and add to the deep anxieties with which, in common with 
all my countrymen, I regard the menacing aspect of the 
present hour. Let us hope the best. Our government, I 
know, is exerting itself to the utmost verge of its power to 
remove every just ground of ofiense that the unfortunate 
nomination of a German prince to the Spanish throne could 
not fail to have given to French statesmen.” 


280 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ I am glad you concede that such a nomination was a just 
ground of oflense,” said Lemercier, rather bitterly ; “ for I 
have met Englishmen who asserted that France had no right 
to resent any choice of a sovereign that Spain might make.” 

“ Englishmen in general are not very reflective politicians 
in foreign affairs,” said Graham ; “ but those who are must 
see that France could not. without alarm the most justifiable, 
contemplate a cordon of hostile States being drawn around 
her on all sides,- — Germany, in itself so formidable since the 
field of Sadowa, on the east ; a German prince in the south- 
west ; the not improbable alliance between Prussia and the 
Italian kingdom, already so alienated from the France to 
which it owes so much. If England would be uneasy were 
a great maritime power possessed of Antwerp, how much more 
uneasy might France justly be if Prussia could add the 
armies of Spain to those of Germany and launch them both 
upon France ! But the cause of alarm is over — the Hohen- 
zollern is withdrawn. Let us hope for the best.” 

The three men had now seated themselves at a table in the 
Trois Fr^res, and Lemercier volunteered the task of inspecting 
the menu and ordering the repast, still keeping guard on Fox. 

“ Observe that man,” said Duplessis, pointing towards a 
gentleman who had just entered ; “ the other day he was the 
popular hero — now, in the excitement of threatened war, he 
is permitted to order his hifteh uncongratulated, uncaressed. 
Such is fame at Paris ! here to-day and gone to-morrow.” 

“ How did the man become famous ?” 

“ He is a painter, and refused a decoration — the only 
French painter who ever did.” 


<4 


THE PARISIANS. 


281 


“ And wliy refuse ?” 

“ Because he is more stared at as the man who refused, 
than he would have been as the man who accepted. If ever 
the Bed Bepublicans have their day, those among them most 
certain of human condemnation will be the coxcombs who 
have gone mad from the desire of human applause.” 

“ You are a profound philosopher, M. Duplessis.” 

“ I hope not — I have an especial contempt for philosophers. 
Pardon me a moment — I see a man to whom I would say a 
word or two.” 

Duplessis crossed over to another table to speak to a middle- 
aged man of somewhat remarkable countenance, with the red 
ribbon in his button-hole, in whom Graham recognized an 
ex-minister of the Emperor, differing from most of those at 
that day in his Cabinet, in the reputation of being loyal to 
his master and courageous against a mob. 

Left thus alone with Lemercier, Graham said — 

“ Pray tell me where I can find your friend the Marquis de 
Bochebriant. I called at his apartment this morning, and I 
was told that he had gone on some visit into the country, 
taking his valet, and the concierge could not give me his 
address. I thought myself so lucky on meeting with you, 
who are sure to know.” 

“ No, I do not ; it is some days since I saw Alain. But 
Duplessis will be sure to know.” Here the financier rejoined 
them. 

“ Mon clier^ Grarm Yarn wants to know for what Sabine 
shades Bochebriant has deserted the ’‘fumum opes strepi- 
tumque^ of the capital.” 


282 


THE PARISIANS. 


Ah ! the Marquis is a friend of yours, Monsieur ?” 

“ I can scarcely boast that honor, but he is an acquaint- 
ance whom I should be very glad to see again.” 

“ At this moment he is at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s 
country-house near Fontainebleau ; I had a hurried line from 
him two days ago stating that he was going there on her 
urgent invitation. But he may return to-morrow; at all 
events, he dines with me on the 8th, and I shall be charmed 
if you will do me the honor to meeii him at my house.” 

“ It is an invitation too agreeable to refuse, and I thank 
you very much for it.” 

Nothing worth recording passed further in conversation 
between Grraham and the two Frenchmen. He left them 
smoking their cigars in the garden, and walked homeward by 
the Hue de Bivoli. As he was passing beside the Magasin 
du Louvre, he stopped, and made way for a lady crossing 
quickly out of the shop towards her carriage at the door. 
Glancing at him with a slight inclination of her head in 
acknowledgment of his courtesy, the lady recognized his 
features. 

“Ah, Mr. Vane!” she cried, almost joyfully — “you are 
then at Paris, though you have not come to see me.” 

“ I only arrived last night, dear Mrs. Morley,” said Graham, 
rather embarrassed, “and only on some matters of business 
which unexpectedly summoned me. My stay will probably 
be very short.” 

“ In that case let me rob you of a few minutes — no, not 
rob you even of them ; I can take you wherever you want to 
go, and, as my carriage moves more quickly than you do on 


THE PARISIANS. 


283 


foot, I shall save you the minutes instead of robbing you of 
them.” 

“You are most kind; but I was only going to my hotel, 
tvhich is close by.” 

“ Then you have no excuse for not taking a short drive 
with me in the Champs Elys^es — come.” 

Thus bidden, Graham could not civilly disobey. He 
handed the fair American into her carriage, and seated him- 
self by her side. 


CHAPTEK III. 

“ Mr. Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies to make 
for the interest in your life which my letter to you so indis- 
creetly betrayed.” 

“ Oh, Mrs. Morley ! you cannot guess how deeply that 
interest touched me.” 

“ I should not have presumed so far,” continued Mrs. 
Morley, unheeding the interruption, “if I had not been 
altogether in error as to the nature of your sentiments in a 
certain quarter. In this you must blame my American rear- 
ing. With us there are many flirtations between boys and 
girls which come to nothing ; but when in my country a man 
like you meets with a woman like Mademoiselle Cicogna, 
there cannot be flirtation. His attentions, his looks, his 
manner, reveal, to the eyes of those who care enough for him 
to watch, one of two things — either he coldly admires and 
esteems or he loves with his whole heart and soul a woman 


284 


THE PARISIANS. 


worthy to inspire such a love. Well, I did watch, and I waa 
absurdly mistaken. I imagined that I saw love, and rejoiced 
for the sake of both of you to think so. I know that in all 
countries, our own as well as yours, love is so morbidly sensi- 
tive and jealous that it is always apt to invent imaginary foes 
to itself. Esteem and admiration never do that. I thought 
that some misunderstanding, easily removed by the interven- 
tion of a third person, might have impeded the impulse of 
two' hearts towards each other, — and so I wrote. I had 
assumed that you loved — I am humbled to the last degree — 
you only admired and esteemed.” 

“ Your irony is very keen, Mrs. Morley, and to you it may 
seem very just.” 

“ Don’t call me Mrs. Morley in that haughty tone of voice, 
— can’t you talk to me as you would talk to a friend ? You 
only esteemed and admired — there is an end of it.” 

“No, there is not an end of it,” cried Graham, giving way 
to an impetuosity of passion which rarely, indeed, before 
another, escaped his self-control ; “ the end of it to me is a 
life out of which is ever stricken such love as I could feel for 
woman. To me true love can only come once. It came 
with my first look on that fatal face — ^it has never left me in 
thought by day, in dreams by night. The end of it to me is 
farewell to all such happiness as the one love of a life can 
promise — but ’ ’ 

“But what?” asked Mrs. Morley softly, and very much 
moved by the passionate earnestness of Graham’s voice and 
words. 

“ But,” he continued, with a forced smile, “ we Englishmen 


THE PARISIANS. 


285 


are trained to the resistance of absolute authority ; we cannot 
submit all the elements that make up our being to the sway 
of a single despot. Love is the painter of existence, it should 
not be its sculptor.” 

I ‘‘ I do not understand the metaphor.” 

“ Love colors our life, it should not chisel its form.” 

“ My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the 
human heart is too large and too restless to be quietly packed 
up in an aphorism. Do you mean to tell me that if you found 
you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna’s happiness as well as re- 
signed your own, that thought would not somewhat deform 
the very shape you would give to your life ? Is it color alone 
that your life would lose?” 

“ Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordi- 
nary girl in whom idleness exaggerates the strength of any 
fancy over which it dreamily broods. Isaura Cicogna has her 
occupations — her genius — her fame — her career. Honestly 
speaking, I think that in these she will find a happiness that 
no quiet hearth could bestow. I will say no more. I feel 
persuaded that were we two united I could not make her 
happy. With the irresistible impulse that urges the genius 
of the writer towards its vent in public sympathy and ap- 
plause, she would chafe if I said, ‘ Be contented to be wholly 
mine.’ And if I said it not, and felt I had no right to say 
it, and allowed the full scope to her natural ambition, what 
then? She would chafe yet more to find that I had no 
fellowship in her aims and ends — that where I should feel 
pride I felt humiliation. It would be so ; I cannot help it : 
'tis my nature.” 


286 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ So be it, then. When next year perhaps you visit Paris, 
you will be safe from my officious interference-^Isaura will 
be the wife of another.” 

Graham pressed his hand to his heart with the sudden 
movement of one who feels there an agonizing spasm his 
cheek, his very lips were bloodless. 

“ I told you,” he said bitterly, “ that your fears of my 
influence over the happiness of one so gifted, and so strong in 
such gifts, were groundless ; you allow that I should be very 
soon forgotten.” 

“ I allow no such thing : I wish I could. But do you 
know so little of a woman’s heart (and, in matters of heart., I 
never yet heard that genius had a talisman against emotion), 
— do you know so little of a woman’s heart as not to know 
that the very moment in which she may accept a marriage the 
least fitted to render her happy is that in which she has lost 
all hope of happiness in another?” 

“ Is it indeed so ?” murmured Graham. “ Ay, I can con- 
ceive it.” 

“ And have you so little comprehension of the necessities 
which that fame, that career to which you allow she is im- 
pelled by the instincts of genius, impose on this girl, young, 
beautiful, fatherless, motherless ? No matter how pure her 
life, can she guard it from the slander of envious tongues ? 
Will not all her truest friends — would not you if you were 
her brother — press upon her, by all the arguments that have 
most weight with the woman who asserts independence in her 
modes of life and yet is wise enough to know that the world 
can only judge of virtue by its shadow, reputation, not to 


THE PARISIANS. 


287 


dispense with the protection which a husband can alone 
secure ? And that is why I warn you, if it be yet time, that 
in resigning your own happiness you may destroy Isaura’s. 
She will wed another, but she will not be happy. What a 
chimera of dread your egotism as man conjures up ! Oh, 
forsooth, the qualities that charm and delight the world are to 
unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man ! Fie on you ! — fie !” 

Whatever answer Graham might have made to these im- 
passioned reproaches was here checked. 

Two men on horseback stopped the carriage. One was 
Enguerrand de Yandemar, the other was the Algerine colonel 
whom we met at the supper given at the Maison Doree by 
Frederic Lemercier. 

Pardon^ Madame Morley,” said Enguerrand, “but there 
are symptoms of a mob-epidemic a little farther up ; the fever 
began at Belleville, and is threatening the health of the 
Champs Elysees. Don’t be alarmed — it may be nothing, 
though it may be much. In Paris, one can never calculate 
an hour beforehand the exact progress of a politico-epidemic 
fever. At present I say, ‘ Bah ! a pack of ragged boys, 
gamins de Paris but my fjiend the Colonel, twisting his 
moustache en souriant amerement^ says, ‘ It is the indigna- 
tion of Paris at the apathy of the government under insult 
to the honor of France;’ and Heaven only knows how rapidly 
French gamins grow into giants when colonels talk about the 
indignation of Paris and the honor of France !” 

“ But what has happened?” asked Mrs. Morley, turning to 
the Colonel. 

“ Madame,” replied the warrior, “ it is rumored that the 


288 


THE PARISIANS. 


King of Prussia has turned his back upon the Ambassador 
of France, and that \\\q pekm who is for peace at any price — 
M. Ollivier — will say to-morrow in the Chamber that France 
submits to a slap in the face.” 

“ Please, Monsieur de Yandemar, to tell my coachman to 
drive home,” said Mrs. Morley. 

The carriage turned and went homeward. Th^ Colonel 
lifted his hat, and rode back to see what the gamins were 
about. Enguerrand, who had no interest in the gamins, and 
who looked on the Colonel as a bore, rode by the side of the 
carriage. 

“ Is there anything serious in this ?” asked Mrs. Morley. 

“ At this moment, nothing. What it may be this hour 
to-morrow I cannot say. Ah, Monsieur Yane, hon-jour — I 
did not recognize you at first. Once, in a visit at the chateau 
of one of your distinguished countrymen, I saw two game- 
cocks turned out facing each other : they needed no pretext 
for quarreling — neither do France and Prussia — no matter 
which game-cock gave the first ofiense, the two game-cocks 
must have it out. All that Ollivier can do, if he be wise, is 
to see that the French cock has his steel spurs as long as the 
Prussian’s. But this I do say, that if Ollivier attempts to put 
the French cock back into its bag, the Empire is gone in 
forty-eight hours. That to me is a trifie — I care nothing for 
the Empire ; but that which is not a trifle is anarchy and 
chaos. Better war and the Empire than peace and Jules 
Favre. But let us seize the present hour. Monsieur Yane : 
whatever happens to-morrow, shall we dine together to-day ? 
name your restaurant.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


289 


“I am so grieved,” answered Graham, rousing himself — 
“ I am here only on business, and engaged all the evening.” 

“ What a wonderful thing is this life of ours !” said En- 
guerrand. “ The destiny of France at this moment hangs on 
a thread — I, a Frenchman, say to an English friend, ‘ Let us 
iline — a cutlet to-day and a fig for to-morrow and my Eng- 
lish friend, distinguished native of a country with which we 
have the closest alliance, tells me that in this crisis of France 
he has business to attend to ! My father is quite right ; he 
accepts the Yoltairean philosophy, and cries, Vivent les in- 
diff events P’ 

“ My dear M. de Yandemar,” said Graham, “ in every 
country you will find the same thing. All individuals massed 
together constitute public life. Each individual has a life of 
his own, the claims and the habits and the needs of which 
do not suppress his sympathies with public life, but impe- 
riously overrule them. Mrs. Morley, permit me to pull the 
check-string — I get out here.” 

“ I like that man,” said Euguerrand, as he continued to ride 
by the fair American ; “ in language and esjyrit he is so French.” 

“ I used to like him better than you can,” answered Mrs. 
Morley ; “ but in prejudice and stupidity he is so English. 
As it seems you are disengaged, come and partake, pot aufeu^ 
with Frank and me.” 

“ Charmed to do so,” answered the cleverest and best-bred 
of all Parisian heavx gan^mis ; “ but forgive me if I quit you 
soon. This poor France ! Entre no^is, I am very uneasy 
about the Parisian fever. I must run away after dinner to 

clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins.’ 

Yol. II.-n 19 


290 


THE PARISIANS. 


“We have nothing like that French Legitimist in the 
States,” said the fair American to herself, “ unless we should 
ever be so silly as to make Legitimists of the ruined gentle- 
men of the South.” 

Meanwhile Graham Yane went slowly back to his apart 
ment. No false excuse had he made to Enguerrand ; this even- 
ing was devoted to M. Renard, who told him little he had not 
known before ; hut his private life overruled his public — and 
all that night he, professed politician, thought sleeplessly, not 
over the crisis to France, which might alter the conditions of 
Europe, but the talk on his private life of that intermeddling 
American woman. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, Wednesday, July 6th, commenced one of 
those eras in the world’s history in which private life would 
vainly boast that it overrules Life Public. How many private 
lives does such a terrible time influence, absorb, darken with 
sorrow, crush into graves ! 

It was the day when the Hue de Gramont uttered the fatal 
speech which determined the die between peace and war. No 
one not at Paris on that day can conceive the popular en- 
thusiasm with which that speech was hailed — the greater 
because the warlike tone of it was not anticipated ; because 
there had been a rumor amidst circles the best informed that 
a speech of pacific moderation was to be the result of the 
Imperial Council. Rapturous indeed were the applauses with 


THE PARISIANS. 


291 


whicli the sentences that breathed haughty defiance were 
hailed by the Assembly. The ladies in the tribune rose with 
one accord, waving their handkerchiefs. Tall, stalwart, dark, 
with Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister of 
France seemed to say, with Catiline in the fine tragedy, “ Lo 1 
where I stand, I am war I” 

Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour — the 
Due de Gramont became at once raised to that eminence. 

All the journals, save the very few which were friendly to 
peace because hostile to the Emperor, resounded with praise, 
not only of the speech, but of the speaker. It is with a 
melancholy sense of amusement that one recalls now to mind 
those organs of public opinion — with what romantic fondness 
they dwelt on the persond graces of the man who had at last 
given voice to the chivalry of France — the charming gravity 
of his countenance — the mysterious expression of his eye 1” 

As the crowd poured from the Chambers, Victor de 
Maul4on and Savaiin, who had been among the listeners, 
encountered. 

“No chance for my friends the Orleanists now,” said 
Savarin. “ You who mock at all parties are, I suppose, at 
heart for the Republican — small chance, too, for that.” 

“ I do not agree with you. Violent impulses have quick 
reactions.” 

“ But what reaction could shake the Emperor after he 
returns a conqueror, bringing in his pocket the left bank of • 
the Rhine?” 

None — when he does that. Will he do it ? Does he 
himself think he will do it? I doubt ” 


292 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Doubt tbe French army against the Prussian ?” 

“ Against the Grerman people united — yes, very much.” 

“ But war will disunite the German people. Bavaria will 
surely assist us — Hanover will rise against the spoliator — 
Austria at our first successes must shake off her present 
enforced neutrality.” 

“ You have not been in Germany, and I have. What yes- 
terday was a Prussian army, to-morrow will be a German 
population, far exceeding our own in numbers, in hardihood 
of body, in cultivated intellect, in military discipline. But 
talk of something else. How is my ex-editor — poor Gustave 
Rameau ?” 

“ Still very weak, but on the mend. You may have him 
back in his office soon.” 

“ Impossible ! even in his sick-bed his vanity was more 
vigorous than ever. He issued a war-song, which has gone 
the round of the war journals, signed by his own name. He 
must have known very well that the name of such a Tyrtaeus 
cannot reappear as the editor of ‘ Le Sens Communf that in 
launching his little firebrand he burned all vessels that could 
waft him back to the port he had quitted. But I daresay he 
has done well for his own interests ; I doubt if ‘Xe Sens 
Commun' can much longer hold its ground in the midst of 
the prevalent lunacy.” 

“ What ! it has lost subscribers ? — gone off in sale already, 
since it declared for peace?” 

“ Of course it has ; and after the article which, if I live 
over to-night, will appear to-morrow, I should wonder if it 
sell enough to cover the cost of the print and paper.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


293 


“ Martyr to principle ! I revere, but I do not envy thee.” 

“ Martyrdom is not my ambition. If Louis Napoleon be 
defeated, what then ? Perhaps he may be the martyr ; and 
the Favres and Gambettas may roast their own eggs on the 
gridiron they heat for his Majesty.” 

Here an English gentleman, who was the very able corre- 
spondent to a very eminent journal, and in that capacity had 
made acquaintance with De Mauleon, joined the two French- 
men ; Savarin, however, after an exchange of salutations, went 
his way. 

“ May I ask a frank answer to a somewhat rude question, 
M. le Vicomte ?” said the Englishman. “ Suppose that the 
Imperial Government had to-day given in their adhesion to 
the peace party, how long would it have been before their 
orators in the Chamber and their organs in the press would 
have said that France was governed hy poltronsf^ 

“ Probably for most of the twenty-four hours. But there 
are a few who are honest in their convictions j of that few I 
am one.” 

“ And would have supported the Emperor and his govern- 
ment?” 

“ No, Monsieur — I do not say that.” 

“ Then the Emperor would have turned many friends into 
enemies, and no enemies into friends?” 

“ Monsieur, you in England know that a party in opposi- 
tion is not propitiated when the party in power steals its 
measures. Ha ! — pardon me, who is that gentleman, evidently 
your countryman, whom I see yonder talking to the Secretary 
of your Embassy ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


294 

“He? — Mr. Yane — Graham Vane. Do you not know 
him ? He has been much in Paris, attached to our Embassy 
formerly ; a clever man — much is expected from him.” 

“ Ah ! I think I have seen him before, but am not quite 
sure. Did you say Yane? I once knew a Monsieur Yane, 
a distinguished Parliamentary orator.” 

“ That gentleman is his son. Would you like to be intro- 
duced to him ?” 

“ Not to-day — I am in some hurry.” Here Victor lifted 
his hat in parting salutation, and as he walked away cast at 
Graham another glance, keen and scrutinizing. “ I have seen 
that man before,” he muttered : “ where ? — when ? can it be 
only a family likeness to the father ? No, the features are 
different; the profile is — ha! — Mr. Lamb. Mr. Lamb — 
but why call himself by that name ? — why disguised ? — what 
can he have to do with poor Louise ? Bah ! — these are not 
questions I can think of now. This war — this war — can it 
yet be prevented ? How it will prostrate all the plans my 
ambition so carefully schemed 1 Oh I at least, if I were but 
in the Chanibre! Perhaps I yet may be before the war is 
ended — the Chavignys have great interest in their department.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


295 


CHAPTER V. 

Graham had left a note with Rochebriant’s concierge, 
requesting an interview on the Marquis’s return to Paris; 
and on the evening after the day just commemorated he re- 
ceived a line, saying that Alain had come back, and would 
be at home at nine o’clock. Graham found himself in the 
Breton’s apartment punctually at the hour indicated. 

Alain was in high spirits : he burst at once into enthusi- 
astic exclamations on the virtual announcement of war. 

“ Congratulate me, mon cher V he cried — “ the news was a 
joyous surprise to me. Only so recently as yesterday morn- 
ing I was under the gloomy apprehension that the Imperial 
Cabinet would continue to back Ollivier’s craven declaration 
‘ that France had not been affronted !’ The Duchesse de 
Tarascon, at whose cam/pagne I was a guest, is (as you 
doubtless know) very much in the confidence of the Tuileries. 
On the first signs of war I wrote to her, saying that what- 
ever the objections of my pride to enter the army as a private 
in time of peace, such objections ceased on the moment when 
all distinctions of France must vanish in the eyes of sons 
eager to defend her banners. The Duchesse in reply begged 
me to come to her campagne and talk over the matter. I 
went ; she then said that if war should break out it was the 
intention to organize the Mobiles and officer them with men 
of birth and education, irrespective of previous military ser- 


296 


THE PARISIANS. 


vice, and in that case I might count on my epaulets. But 
only two nights ago she received a letter — I know not, of 
course, from whom — evidently from some high authority — 
that induced her to think the moderation of the Council 
would avert the war and leave the swords of the Mobiles in 
their sheaths. I suspect the decision of yesterday must have 
been a very sudden one. Ce cher Gramont ! See what it is 
to have a well-born man in a sovereign’s councils.” 

“ If war must come, I at least wish all renown to yourself. 
But ” 

“ Oh, spare me your ‘ huts the English are always too full 
of them where their own interests do not appeal to them. They 
had no ‘buts’ for war in India or a march into Abyssinia.” 

Alain spoke petulantly ; at that moment the French were 
very much irritated by the monitory tone of the English 
journals. Graham prudently avoided the chance of rousing 
the wrath of a young hero yearning for his epaulets. 

“I am English enough,” said he, with good-humored 
courtesy, “ to care for English interests ; and England has no 
interest abroad dearer to her than the welfare and dignity of 
France. And now let me tell you why I presumed on an 
acquaintance less intimate than I could desire, to solicit this 
interview on a matter which concerns myself, and in which 
you could perhaps render me a considerable service.” 

“ If I can, count it rendered. Move to this sofa, join me 
in a cigar, and let us talk at ease comme de vieux amis whose 
fathers or brothers might have fought side by side in the 
Crimea.” Graham removed to the sofa beside Bochebriaut, 
and, after one or two whiffs, laid aside the cigar and began ; 


THE PARISIANS. 


297 


“Among tlie correspondence which Monsieur your father 
has left, are there any letters of no distant date signed 
Marigny — Madame Marigny? Pardon me; 1 should state 
my motive in putting this question. I am intrusted with a 
charge, the fulfillment of which may prove to the benefit of 
this lady or her child; such fulfillment is a task imposed 
upon my honor. But all the researches to discover this 
lady which I have instituted stop at a certain date with 
this information, — viz., that she corresponded occasionally 
with the late Marquis de Kochebriant, that he habitually 
preserved the letters of his correspondents, and that these 
letters were severally transmitted to you at his decease.” 

Alain’s face had taken a very grave expression while 
Graham spoke, and he now replied with a mixture of haugh- 
tiness and embarrassment — 

“ The boxes containing the letters my father received and 
preserved were sent to me as you say — the larger portion of 
them were from ladies — sorted and labeled, so that in glancing 
at any letter in each packet I could judge of the general 
tenor of those in the same packet, without the necessity of 
reading them. All packets of that kind. Monsieur Vane, I 
burned. I do not remember any letters signed Marigny.” 

“ I perfectly understand, my dear Marquis, that you would 
destroy all letters which your father himself would have de- 
stroyed if his last illness had been sufficiently prolonged. 
But I do not think the letters I mean would have come 
under that classification ; probably they were short, and on 
matters of business relating to some third person — some 
person, for instance, of the name of Louise, or of Duval.” 


298 


THE PARISIANS. 


‘‘ Stop ! let me think. I have a vague remembrance of 
one or two letters which rather perplexed me; they were 

labeled ‘Louise D . Mem.: to make further inquiries 

as to the fate of her uncle.’ ” 

“ Marquis, those are the letters I seek. Thank Heaven, 
you have not destroyed them !” 

“ No ; there was no reason why I should destroy, though I 
really cannot state precisely any reason why I kept them. I 
have a very vague recollection of their existence.” 

“ I entreat you to allow me at least to glance at the hand- 
writing and compare it with that of a letter I have about 
me ; and if the several handwritings correspond, I would ask 
you to let me have the address, which, according to your 
father’s memorandum, will be found in the letters you have 
preserved.” 

“ To compliance with such a request I not only cannot 
demur, but perhaps it may free me from some responsibility 
which I might have thought the letters devolved upon my 
executorship. I am sure they did not concern the honor of 
any woman of any family, for in that case I must have burned 
them.” 

“ Ah, Marquis, shake hands there ! In such concord 
between man and man there is more entente cordiale between 
England and France than there was at Sebastopol. Now let 
me compare the handwritings.” 

“ The box that contained the letters is not here — I left it at 
Rochebriant. I will telegraph to my aunt to send it ; the 
day after to-morrow it will no doubt arrive. Breakfast with 
me that day — say at one o’clock — and after breakfast the box I” 


THE PARISIANS. 


299 


“ How can I tliauk you?” 

“ Thank me ! but you said your honor was concerned in 
your request. Requests affecting honor between men comme il 
faut is a ceremony, of course, like a bow between them. One 
bows, the other returns the bow — no thanks on either side. 
Now that we have done with that matter, let me say that I 
thought your wish for our interview originated in a very 
different cause.” 

“ What could that be ?” 

“ Nay, do you not recollect that last talk between us, when 
with such loyalty you spoke to me about Mademoiselle 
Cicogna, and, supposing that there might be rivalship between 
us, retracted all that you might have before said to warn me 
against fostering the sentiment with which she had inspired 
me, even at the first slight glance of a face which cannot be 
lightly forgotten by tho^e who have once seen it?” 

“I recollect perfectly every word of that talk. Marquis,” 
answered Graham calmly, but with his hand concealed within 
his vest and pressed tightly to his heart. The warning of 
Mrs. Morley flashed upon him. “ Was this the man to seize 
the prize he had put aside — ^this man, younger than himself, 
handsomer than himself, higher in rank ?” 

“ I recollect that talk. Marquis. Well, what then ?” 

In my self-conceit I supposed that you might have heard 
how much I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna — how, .having 
not long since met her at the house of Duplessis (who, by 
the way, writes me word that I shall meet you chez lui to- 
morrow), I have since sought her society wherever there was 
a chance to find it. You may have heard at our club, or 


300 


THE PARISIANS. 


elsewhere, how I adore her genius — how I say that nothing 
so Breton — that is, so pure and so lofty — ^has appeared and 
won readers since the days of Chateaubriand, — and you, 
knowing that les absents ont toujours tort^ come to me and 
ask, ‘ Monsieur de Kochebriant, are we rivals ?’ I expected a 
challenge : you relieve my mind — you abandon the field 
to me ?” 

At the first I warned the reader how improved from his 
old mauvaise honte a year or so of Paris life would make our 
beau Marquis. How a year or two of London life, with its 
horsey slang and its fast girls of the period, would have vul- 
garized an English Rochebriant ! 

Graham gnawed his lips, and replied quietly, “ I do not 
challenge ! Am I to congratulate you ?” 

“ No : that brilliant victory is not for me. I thought that 
was made clear in the conversation I have referred to. But 
if you have done me the honor to be jealous, I am exceed- 
ingly flattered. Speaking seriously, if I admired Mademoi- 
selle Cicogna when you and I last met, the admiration is 
increased by the respect with which I regard a character so 
simply noble. How many women older than she would have 
been spoiled by the adulation that has followed her literary 
success ! — how few women so young, placed in a position so 
critical, having the courage to lead a life so independent, 
would have maintained the dignity of their character free 
from a single indiscretion ! I speak not from my own knowl- 
edge, but from the report of all, who would be pleased enough 
to censure if they could find a cause. Good society is the 
paradise of mauvaises langues.'' 


THE PARISIANS. 


301 


Graham caught Alain’s hand and pressed it, but made no 
answer. 

The young Marquis continued — 

“ You will pardon me for speaking thus freely in the way 
that I would wish any friend to speak of the demoiselle who 
might become my wife. I owe you much, not only for the 
loyalty with which you addressed me in reference to this 
young lady, but for words affecting my own position in 
France, which sank deep into my mind — saved me from 
deeming myself a proscHt in my own land— filled me with a 
manly ambition, not stifled amidst the thick of many effemi- 
nate follies — and, in fact, led me to the career which is about 
to open before me, and in which my ancestors have left me no 
undistinguished examples. Let us speak, then, d coeur ouvert^ 
as one friend to another. Has there been any misunderstand- 
ing between you and Mademoiselle Cicogna which has delayed 
your return to Paris? If so, is it over now?” 

“ There has been no such misunderstanding.” 

“ Do you doubt whether the sentiments you expressed in 
regard to her when we met last year are returned?” 

“ I have no right to conjecture her sentiments. You mis- 
take altogether.” 

“ 1 do not believe that I am dunce enough to mistake your 
feelings towards Mademoiselle — they may be read in your 
face at this moment. Of course I do not presume to hazard 
a conjecture as to thos i of Mademoiselle towards yourself. 
But when I met her, not long since, at the house of 
Puplessis, with whose daughter she is intimate, I chanced 
to speak to her of you, and, if I may judge by looks and 


302 


THE PARISIANS. 


manner, I chose no displeasing theme. You turn away I 
offend you ?” 

“ Offend ! no, indeed ; but on this subject I am not pre- 
pared to converse. I came to Paris on matters of business 
much complicated and which ought to absorb my attention. 
I cannot longer trespass on your evening. The day after 
to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one o’clock.” 

‘‘ Yes, I hope then to have the letters you wish to consult ; 
and, meanwhile, we meet to-morrow at the Hotel Duplessis.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

GtRAHAM had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Mar- 
quis was about to saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis 
was announced. 

These two men had naturally seen much of each other 
since Duplessis had returned from Bretagne and delivered 
Alain from the gripe of Louvier. Scarcely a day had passed 
but what Alain had been summoned to enter into the finan- 
cier’s plans for the aggrandizement of the Rochebriant estates, 
and delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in 
speculations which, thanks to the capital and the abilities 
Duplessis brought to bear, seemed likely to result in the 
ultimate freedom of his property from all burdens, and the 
restoration of his inheritance to a splendor correspondent with 
the dignity of his rank. 

On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to 


THE PARISIANS. 


303 


professional business, Duplessis arranged that these consulta- 
tions should take place in the evenings. From those con- 
sultations Valerie was not banished; Duplessis took her into 
the council as a matter of course. “ Valerie,” said the finan- 
cier to Alain, “ though so young, has a very clear head for 
business ; and she is so interested in all that interests myself, 
that, even where I do not take her opinion, I at least feel my 
own made livelier and brighter by her sympathy.” 

So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or her 
book into the cabinet de travail^ and never obtruding a sug- 
gestion unasked — still, when appealed to, speaking with a 
modest good sense which justified her father’s confidence and 
praise ; and d propos of her book, she had taken Chateau- 
briand into peculiar favor. Alain had respectfully presented 
to her beautifully bound copies of “Atala” and “ Le Genie du 
Christianisme it was astonishing, indeed, how he had already 
contrived to regulate her tastes in literature. The charms of 
those quiet family evenings had stolen into the young Breton’s 
heart. 

He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he 
had before sought for a pleasure that his nature had not 
found ; for, amidst the amusements of Paris, Alain remained 
intensely Breton — viz., formed eminently for the simple joys 
of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone with the 
antique religion of his fathers, gathering round it all the 
images of pure and noble affections which the romance of 
a poetic temperament had evoked from the solitude which 
had surrounded a melancholy boyhood, an uncontaminated 
youth. 


304 


THE PARISIANS. 


Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much 
disturbed from its wonted saturnine composure. 

Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse 
de Tarascon ? Can it be ? You ask military service in this 
ill-omened war? — you?” 

“ My dear and best friend,” said Alain, very much startled, 
“ I should have thought that you, of all men in the world, 
would have most approved of my request — ^you, so devoted 
an Imperialist, — you indignant that the representative of one 
of those families, which the First Napoleon so eagerly and so 
vainly courted should ask for the grade of sous-lieutenant in 
the armies of Napoleon the Third, — you, who of all men 
know how ruined are the fortunes of a Hochebriant, — you 
feel surprised that he clings to the noblest heritage his an- 
cestors have left to him — their sword ! I do not understand 
you.” 

“ Marquis,” said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding 
Alain with a look in which were blended the sort of admira- 
tion and the sort of contempt with which a practical man of 
the world, who, having himself gone through certain credulous 
follies, has learned to despise the follies, but retains a reminis- 
cence of sympathy with the fools they bewitch, — “ Marquis, 
pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common 
sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist 
scruples had allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil 
appointment not unsuited to your rank, under the ablest 
sovereign, as a civilian, to whom France can look for rational 
liberty combined with established order. Such openings to a 
suitable career you have ‘rejected ; but who on earth could 


THE PARISIANS. 


305 


expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword 
hitherto sacred to the Bourbons on behalf of a cause which 
the madness, I do not say of France, but of Paris, has en- 
forced on a sovereign against whom you would fight to- 
morrow if you had a chance of placing the descendant of 
Henry IV. on his throne?” 

“ I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my 
country against the foreigner.” 

“ An excellent answer, if the foreigner had invaded your 
country ; but it seems that your country is going to invade 
the foreigner — a very different thing. Chut ! all this is dis- 
cussion most painful to me. I feel for the Emperor a personal 
loyalty, and for the hazards he is about to encounter a pro- 
phetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt for 
Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of 
ourselves and the effect the war should have upon our in- 
dividual action. You are aware, of course, that though M. 
Louvier has had notice of our intention to pay off his mort- 
gage, that intention cannot be carried into effect for six 
months : if the money be not then forthcoming, his hold on 
Bochebriant remains unshaken — the sum is large.” 

“ Alas ! yes.” 

“ The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect 
many speculative adventures and operations at the very mo- 
ment credit may be most needed. It is absolutely necessary 
that I should be daily at my post on the Bourse, and hourly 
watch the ebb and flow of events. Under these circumstances, 
I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence 
in Bretagne. We have already begun negotiations on a 
VoL. II. 20 


306 


THE PARISIANS. 


somewhat extensive scale, whether as regards the improvement 
of forests and orchards, or the plans for building-allotments, 
as soon as the lands are free for disposal. For all these the 
eye of a master is required. I entreat you, then, to take up 
your residence at Rochebriant.” 

“ My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode 
of relieving me from the dangers of war. I have, as you 
must be conscious, no practical knowledge of business. 
Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry out your 
views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more 
ability.” 

“ Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hebert : if you 
wish to get your own cart out of the ruts, put your own 
shoulder to the wheel.” 

Alain colored high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly ad- 
dressed, but he replied with a kind of dignified meekness — 

“ I shall ever remain grateful for what you have done and 
wish to do for me. But, assuming that you suppose rightly, 
the estates of Bochebriant would, in your hands, become a 
profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage 
and the sum you have paid Louvier on my account. Let it 
pass to you, irrespective of me. I shall console myself in the 
knowledge that the old place will be restored, and that those 
who honored its old owners prosper in hands so strong, guided 
by a heart so generous.” 

Duplessis was deeply afiected by these simple words ; they 
seized him on the tenderest side of his character — for his 
heart was generous, and no one, except his lost wife and his 
loving child, had ever before discovered it to be so. Has it 


THE PARISIANS. 


307 


ever happened to you, reader, to be appreciated on the one 
point of the good or the great that is in you — on which 
secretly you value yourself most — but for which nobody, not 
admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit ? If 
that has happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when 
the fittest representative of that divine chivalry which, if 
sometimes deficient in head, owes all that exalts it to riches 
of heart, spoke thus to the professional money-maker, whose 
qualities of head were so acknowledged that a compliment 
to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose qualities 
of heart had never yet received a compliment I 

Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, mur- 
muring, “ Listen to me. I love you ; I never had a son — ^be 
mine ; Kochebriant shall be my daughter’s 

Alain returned c e embrace, and then, recoiling, said — 

“ Father, your first desire must be honor for your son. 
You have guessed my secret — I have learned to love Valerie. 
Seeing her out in the world, she seemed like other girls, fair 
and commonplace ; seeing her at your house, I have said to 
myself, ‘ There is the one girl fairer than all others in my 
eyes, and the one individual to whom all other girls are 
commonplace.’ ” 

“ Is that true? — is it?” 

‘‘ True ! does a gentilhomme ever lie ? And out of that 
love for her has grown this immovable desire to be something 
worthy of her — something that may lift me from the vulgar 
platform of men who owe all to ancestors, nothing to them- 
selves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from 
ruin and penury by Val4rie’s father, could be base enough to 


308 


THE PARISIANS. 


say to her, ‘ In return be Madame la Marquise de Roche- 
briant’ ? Do you suppose that I, whom you would love and 
respect as son, could come to you and say, ‘ I am oppressed 
by your favors — I am crippled with debts — give me your 
millions and we are quits’ ? No, Duplessis ! You, so well 
descended yourself — so superior as man among men that 
you would have won name and position had you been born 
the son of a shoeblack, — you would eternally despise the 
noble who, in days when all that we Bretons deem holy in 
noblesse is subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so 
vilely forget the only motto which the scutcheons of all gentil- 
Tiommes have in common, ‘ Noblesse oblige' War, with all its 
perils and all its grandeur — war lifts on high the banners of 
France, — war, in which every ancestor of mine whom I care 
to recall aggrandized the name that descends to me. Let me 
then do as those before me have done ; let me prove that I 
am worth something in myself; and then you and I are 
equals, and I can say with no humbled crest, ‘ Your bene- 
fits are accepted: the man who has fought not ignobly for 
France may aspire to the hand of your daughter. Give me 
Valerie; as to her dot — be it so: Bochebriant — it will pass 
to her children.” 

“ Alain I Alain 1 my friend I my son ! — but if you fall.” 

“ Valerie will give you a nobler son.” 

Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no 
more in deprecation of Alain’s martial resolves. 

A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, how- 
ever philosophical he may be, who does not sympathize with 
the follies of honor — who does not concede indulgence to the 


THE PARISIANS. 


309 


hot blood of youth when he says, “ My country is insulted 
and her banner is unfurled” — may certainly be a man of 
excellent common sense; but if such men had been in the 
majority, Gaul would never have been France — Gaul would 
have been a province of Germany. 

And as Duplessis walked homeward — he, the calmest and 
most far-seeing of all authorities on the Bourse — the man 
who, excepting only De Mauleon, most decidedly deemed tho 
cause of the war a blunder and most forebodingly anticipated 
its issues — caught the prevalent enthusiasm. Everywhere he 
was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by congratu- 
lating smiles. “ How right you have been, Duplessis, when 
you have laughed at those who have said, ‘ The Emperor is ill, 
decrepit, done up’ 1” 

“ Vive V Empereur ! at last we shall be face to face with 
those insolent Prussians!” 

Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boule- 
vards, greeted by all the groups enjoying the cool night air 
before the cafes, Duplessis had caught the war epidemic. 

Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie’s chamber. 
“ Sleep well to-night, child : Alain has told me that he adores 
thee ; and if he will go to the war, it is that he may lay his 
laurels at thy feet. Bless thee, my child : thou couldst not 
have made a nobler choice 1” 

Whether, after these words, Valerie slept well or not, ’tis 
not for me to say ; but, if she did sleep, I venture to guess 
that her dreams were rose-colored. 


310 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTEE VIL 

All the earlier part of that next day Graham Vane remained 
in-doors — a lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with 
that summer day all hearts at Paris were in unison. Dis- 
content was charmed into enthusiasm — Belleville and Mont- 
martre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism and 
other “ isms” not to be realized except in some undiscovered 
Atlantis ! 

The Emperor was the idol of the day — the names of Jules 
Favre and Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand 
Monnier, still out of work, beginning to feel the pinch of 
want, and fierce for any revolution that might turn topsy- 
turvy the conditions of labor, — even Armand Monnier was 
found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot 
of the column in the Place Yendome, and heard to say to a 
fellow-malcontent, with eyes uplifted to the statue of the 
First Napoleon, “ Do you not feel at this moment that no 
Frenchman can be long angry with the little corporal ? He 
denied La Liberti^ but he gave La Ghirey 

Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was 
compelling into one resolve the doubts and scruples which had 
so long warred against the heart which they ravaged but 
could not wholly subdue. 

The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had 


THE PARISIANS. 


311 


placed in a light in which he had not before regarded it the 
image of Isaura. He had reasoned from the starting-point 
of his love for her, and had sought to convince himself that 
against that love it was his duty to strive. 

But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as 
well as to his heart. What though he had never formally 
declared to her his affection — never in open words wooed 
her as his own — never even hinted to her the hopes of a 
union which at one time he had fondly entertained, — still, 
was it true that his love had been too transparent not to be 
detected by her and not to have led her on to return it? 

Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not 
indifferent to her ; at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained 
her esteem and perhaps interested her fancy. 

We know also how he' had tried to persuade himself that 
the artistic temperament, especially when developed in women, 
is too elastic to suffer the things of real life to have lasting 
influence over happiness or sorrow, — that in the pursuits in 
which her thought and imagination found employ, in the 
excitement they sustained and the fame to which they con- 
duced, Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary 
pang of disappointed affection, and that a man so alien as 
himself, both by nature and by habit, from the artistic world, 
was the very last persoh who could maintain deep and per- 
manent impression on her actual life or her ideal dreams. 
But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair 
American — what if in all these assumptions he was wholly 
mistaken ? What if, in previously revealing his own heart, 
he had decoyed hers ? What if, by a desertion she had no 


312 


THE PARISIANS. 


right to anticipate, he had blighted her future? What if 
this brilliant child of genius could love as warmly, as deeply, 
as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom there is no 
poetry except love ? If this were so, what became the first 
claim on his honor, his conscience, his duty ? 

The force which but a few days ago his reasonings hud 
given to the arguments that forbade him to think of Isaura, 
became weaker and weaker, as now, in an altered mood of 
reflection, he re-summoned and re-weighed them. 

All those prejudices which had seemed to him such 
rational common- sense truths when translated from his own 
mind into the words of Lady Janet’s letter, — was not Mrs. 
Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets of an 
insolent egotism? Was it not rather to the favor than to the 
disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man’s narrow- 
minded view of woman’s dignity, that this orphan girl could 
with character so unscathed pass through the trying ordeal of 
the public babble, the public gaze — command alike the esteem 
of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley, the reverence of a man 
so chivalrously sensitive to honor as Alain de Kochebriant ? 

]M using thus, Grraham’s countenance at last brightened — a 
glorious joy entered into and possessed him. He felt as a 
man who had burst asunder the swathes and trammels which 
had kept him galled and miserable with the sense of captivity, 
and from which some wizard spell that took strength from 
his own superstition had forbidden to struggle. 

He was free ! — and that freedom was rapture ! — yes, his 
resolve was taken. 

The day was now far advanced. He should have just time 


THE PARISIANS. 


313 


before the dinner with Duplessis to drive to A , where he 

still supposed Isaura resided. How, as his fiacre rolled along 
the well-remembered road— -how completely he lived in that 
world of romance of which he denied himself to be a denizen ! 

Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by 
workmen — it was under repair. No one could tell him to 
what residence the ladies who occupied it the last year had 
removed. 

“ I shall learn from Mrs. Morley,” thought Graham ; and 
at her house he called in going back, but Mrs. Morley was not 
at home. He had only just time, after regaining his apart- 
ment, to change his dress for the dinner to which he was 
invited. As it was, he arrived late, and, while apologizing to 
his host for his want of punctuality, his tongue faltered. At 
the farther end of the room he saw a face, paler and thinner 
than when he had seen it last — a face across which a some- 
thing of grief had gone. 

The servant announced that Monsieur was served. 

“ Mr. Yane,” said Duplessis, “ will you take in to dinner 
Mademoiselle Cicogna ?” 


Yol. II. — o 


sooic x:i- 


CHAPTEH 1. 

Among the frets and checks to the course that “ never did 
run smooth,” there is one which is sufficiently frequent, for 
many a reader will remember the irritation it caused him. 
You have counted on a meeting with the beloved one un- 
witnessed by others, an interchange of confessions and vows 
which others may not hear. You have arranged almost the 
words in which your innermost heart is to be expressed ; pic- 
tured to yourself the very looks by which those words will 
have their sweetest reply. The scene you have thus imagined 
appears to you vivid and distinct as if foreshown in a magic 
glass. And suddenly, after long absence, the meeting takes 
place in the midst of a common companionship : nothing that 
you wished to say can be said. The scene you pictured is 
painted out by the irony of Chance ; and groups and back- 
grounds of which you had never dreamed start forth from 
the disappointing canvas. Happy if that be all ! But some- 
times, by a strange subtle intuition, you feel that the person 
herself is changed ; and sympathetic with that change a 
terrible chill comes over your own heart. 

Before G-raham had taken his seat at the table beside 
Isaura, he felt that she was changed to him. He felt it by 

her very touch as their hands met at the first greeting, — by 
314 


THE PARISIANS. 


315 


the tone of her voice in the few words that passed between 
them, — by the absence of all glow in the smile which had 
once lit np her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in 
spring and gives a richer gladness of color to all its blooms. 
Once seated side by side, they remained for some moments 
silent. Indeed, it would have been rather difficult for any- 
thing less than the wonderful intelligence of lovers between 
whom no wall can prevent the stolen interchange of tokens, 
to have ventured private talk of their own amid the excited 
converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears, admitting 
no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion. 
Englishmen do not recognize the old classic law which limited 
the number of guests where banquets are meant to be pleasant 
to that of the Nine Muses. They invite guests so numerous, 
and so sliy of launching talk across the table, that you may 
talk to the person next to you not less secure from listeners 
than you would be in talking with the stranger whom you 
met at a well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state 
occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into solitude 
with your next neighbor. The guests collected by Duplessis 
completed with himself the number of the Sacred Nine — 
the lost, Valerie, Eochebriant, Graham, Isaura, Signora 
Venosta, La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy and high- 
born Imperialist Prince , and, last and least, one who 

shall be nameless. 

I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of tlieJ)ooks which 
American superstition dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritual- 
ism, how a gifted seer, technically styled medium, sees at the 
opera a box which to other eyes appears un tenanted and 


316 


THE PARISIANS. 


empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well dressed in costume de 
regle^ gazing on the boards and listening to the music. Like 
such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on. 
Though still living, they have no share in the life they 
survey. They come as from another world to hear and to 
see what is passing in ours. In oui-s they lived once, but 
that troubled sort of life they have survived. Still we amuse 
them, as stage-players and puppets amuse ourselves. One of 
these Lookers-on completed the party at the house of Du- 
plessis. 

How lively, how animated the talk was at the financier’s 
pleasant table that day, the 8th of July! The excitement 
of the coming war made itself loud in every Gallic voice 
and kindled in every Gallic eye. Appeals at every second 
minute were made, sometimes courteous, sometimes sarcastic, 
to the Englishman — promising son of an eminent statesman, 
and native of a country in which France is always coveting 
an ally and always suspecting an enemy. Certainly Graham 
could not have found a less propitious moment for asking 
Isaura if she really were changed. And certainly the honor 
of Great Britain was never less ably represented (that is 
saying a great deal) than it was on this occasion by the young 
man reared to diplomacy and aspiring to Parliamentary dis- 
tinction. He answered all questions with a constrained voice 
and an insipid smile, — all questions pointedly addressed to 
him as to what demonstrations of admiring sympathy with 
the gallantry of France might be expected from the English 
government and people; what his acquaintance with the 
German races led him to suppose would be the effect on the 


THE PARISIANS. 


317 


Soutliern States of the first defeat of the Prussians ; whether 
the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a 
crotchety pedant ; whether, if Belgium became so enamored 
of the glories of France as to solicit fusion with her people, 
England would have a right to offer any objection, — etc., etc. 
I do not think that during that festival Graham once thought 
one-millionth so much about the fates of Prussia and France 
as he did think, “ Why is that girl so changed to me ? 
merciful Heaven I is she lost to my life?” 

By training, by habit, even by passion, the man was a 
genuine politician, cosmopolitan as well as patriotie, accus- 
tomed to consider what effect every vibration in that balance 
of European power, which no deep thinker can despise, must 
have on the destinies of civilized humanity, and on those of 
the nation to which he belongs. But are there not moments 
in life when the human heart suddenly narrows the circum- 
ference to which its emotions are extended ? As the ebb of 
a tide, it retreats from the shores it had covered on its flow, 
drawing on with contracted waves the treasure-trove it has 
selected to hoard amid its deeps. 


CHAPTEB 11. 

On quitting the dining-room, the Duchesse de Tarascon 
said to her host, on whose arm she was leaning, “ Of course 
you and I must go with the stream. But is not all the fine 
talk that has passed to-day at your table, and in which we 


318 


THE PARISIANS. 


too have joined, a sort of hypocrisy? I may say this to yoi- , 
I would say it to no other.” 

“And I say to you, Madame la Duchesse, that which I 
would say to no other. Thinking over it as I sit alone, I 
find myself making a ‘ terrible hazard but when I go abroad 
and become infected by the general enthusiasm, I pluck up 
gayety of spirit, and whisper to myself, ‘ True, but it may be 
an enormous gain.’ To get the left bank of the Rhine is a 
trifle ; but to check in our next neighbor a growth which a 
few years hence would overtop us, — that is no trifle. And, 
be the gain worth the hazard or not, could the Emperor, could 
any government likely to hold its own for a week, have declined 
to take the chance of the die?” 

The Duchesse mused a moment, and meanwhile the two 
seated themselves on a divan in the corner of the salon. 
Then she said very slowly, — 

“No government that held its tenure on popular suffrage 
could have done so. But if the Emperor had retained the 
personal authority which once allowed the intellect of one 
man to control and direct the passions of many, I think the 
war would have been averted. I have reason to know that 
the Emperor gave his emphatic support to the least bellicose 
members of the Council, and that Grramont’s speech did not 
contain the passage that precipitates hostilities when the 
Council in which it was framed broke up. These fatal words 
were forced upon him by the temper in which the Ministers 
found the Chamber, and the reports of the popular excite- 
ment which could not be resisted without imminent danger 
of revolution. It is Paris that has forced the war on the 


THE PARISIANS. 


319 


Emperor. But enough of this subject. What must be must ; 
and, as you say, the gain may be greater than the hazard. I 
come to something else you whispered to me before we went 
in to dinner, — a sort of complaint which wounds me sensibly. 
You say I had assisted to a choice of danger and possibly of 
death a very distant connection of mine, who might have 
been a very near connection of yours. You mean Alain de 
Rochebriant ?” 

“ Yes ; I accept him as a suitor for the hand of my only 
daughter.” 

“ I am so glad, not for your sake so much as for his. No 
one can know him well without appreciating in' him the finest 
qualities of the finest order of the French noble ; but, having 
known your pretty Valerie so long, my congratulations are 
for the man who can win her. Meanwhile, hear my explana- 
tion : when I promised Alain any interest I can command for 
the grade of officer in a regiment of Mobiles, I knew not that 
he had formed, or was likely to form, ties or duties to keep 
him at home. I withdraw my promise.” 

“ No, Duchesse, fulfill it. I should be disloyal indeed if I 
robbed a sovereign under whose tranquil and prosperous reign 
I have acquired, with no dishonor, the fortune which Order 
proffers to Commerce, of one gallant defender in the hour of 
need. And, speaking frankly, if Alain were really my son, I 
think I am Frenchman enough to remember that France is 
my mother.” 

“ Say no more, my friend — say no more,” cried the Duchesse, 
with the warm blood of the heart rushing through all the deli- 
cate coatings of pearl-powder. “ If every Frenchman felt as 


320 


THE PARISIANS. 


you do ; if ia this Paris of ours all hostilities of class may 
merge in the one thought of the common country ; if in 
French hearts there yet thrill the same sentiment as that 
which, in the terrible days when all other ties were rent 
asunder, revered France as mother and rallied her sons to 
her aid against the confederacy of Europe, — why, then we 
need not grow pale with dismay at the sight of a Prussian 
needle-gun. Hist ! look yonder : is not that a tableau of 
Youth in Arcady? Worlds rage around, and Love, uncon- 
cerned, whispers to Love !” The Duchesse here pointed to 
a corner of the adjoining room in which Alain and Valerie 
sat apart, he whispering into her ear, her cheek downcast 
and, even seen at that distance, brightened by the delicate 
tenderness of its blushes. 


CHAPTER III. 

But in that small assembly there were two who did not 
attract the notice of Duplessis, or of the lady of the Imperial 

Court. While the Prince and the placid Looker-on 

were engaged at a contest of ecarte, with the lively Venosta, 
for the gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions, Isaura 
was listlessly turning over a collection of photographs strewed 
on a table that stood near to an open window in the remoter 
angle of the room communicating with a long and wide bal- 
cony filled partially with flowers, and overlooking the Champs 
Elys4es, softly lit up by the innumerable summer stars. Sud- 


THE PARISIANS.- 


321 


denly a whisper, the command of which she could not resist, 
thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rushing back to 
her heart. 

“ Do you remember that evening at Enghien? how I said 
that our imagination could not carry us beyond the question 
whether we two should be gazing together that night twelve 
months on that star which each of us had singled out from 
the hosts of heaven ? That was the 8th of July. It is the 
8th of July once more — come and seek for our chosen star. 
Come. I have something to say, which say I must. Come.” 

Mechanically, as it were, — mechanically, as they tell us the 
Somnambulist obeys the Mesmerizer, — Isaura obeyed that 
summons. In a kind of dreamy- submission she followed his 
steps, and found herself on the balcony, flowers around her 
and stars above, by the side of the man who had been to her 
that being ever surrounded by flowers and lighted by stars,— 
the ideal of Romance to the heart of virgin Woman. 

“ Isaura,” said the Englishman, softly. At the sound of 
her own name for the first time heard from those lips, every 
nerve in her frame quivered. “ Isaura, I have tried to live 
without you. I cannot. You are all in all to me : without 
you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers and even heaven 
had withdrawn its stars. Are there difierences between us, 
differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought? 
Only let me hope that you can love me a tenth part so 
much as I love you, and such differences cease to be discord. 
Love harmonizes all sounds, blends all colors into its own 
divine oneness of heart and soul. Look up ! is not the star 
which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not 
0 * 


21 


322 


THE PARISIANS. 


still there? Does it not still invite our gaze? Isaura, 
speak !” 

“ Hush, hush, hush !” The girl could say no more, but she 
recoiled from his side. 

The recoil did not wound him : there was no hate in it. 
He advanced, he caught her hand, and continued, in one of 
those voices which become so musical in summer nights under 
starry skies — 

“ Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without 
a reverence due to the religion which binds earth to heaven — 
a name which to man should be the symbol of life cheered 
and beautified, exalted, hallowed. That name is ‘ wife.’ Will 
you take that name from me?” 

And still Isaura made no reply. She stood mute, and 
cold, and rigid as a statue of marble. At length, as if con- 
sciousness had been arrested and was struggling back, she 
sighed heavily, and passed her hands slowly over her fore- 
head. 

“Mockery, mockery,” she said then, with a smile half 
bitter, half plaintive, on her colorless lips. “ Did you wait 
to ask me that question till you knew what my answer must 
be ? I have pledged the name of wife to another.” 

“ No, no ; you say that to rebuke, to punish me ! Unsay 
it! Unsay it!” 

Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered 
eyes. “How can my words pain you?” she said drearily. 
“Did you not write that I had unfitted myself to be wife to 
you ?” 

“I?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


323 


“ That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of 
private life ? I felt you were so right ! Yes ! I am affianced 

to one who thinks that, in spite of that misfortune ” 

“ Stop, I command you — stop ! You saw my letter to Mrs. 
Morley. I have not had one moment free from torture and 
remorse since I wrote it. But whatever in that letter you 

might justly resent ” 

“ I did not resent ” 

Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on. You 
would forgive could you read my heart. No matter. Every 
sentiment in that letter, except those which conveyed admira- 
tion, I retract. Be mine, and, instead of presuming to check 
in you the irresistible impulse of genius to the first place in 
the head or the heart of the world, I will teach myself to 
encourage, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what a 
difference there is between the absent one and the present 
one — between the distant image against whom our doubts, 
our fears, our suspicions raise up hosts of imaginary giants, 
barriers of visionary walls, and the beloved face before the 
sight of which the hosts are fled, the walls are vanished ? 
Isaura, we meet again. You know now from my own lips 
that I love you. I think your lips will not deny that you 
love me. You say that you are affianced to another. Tell 
the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook your heart. It 
is not yours to give. Save yourself, save him, from a union 
in which there can be no happiness.” 

“ It is too late,” said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with 
no trace of vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. “ Did 
I say now to that other one, ‘ I break the faith that I pledged 


324 


THE PARISIANS. 


to you,’ I should kill him, body and soul. Slight thing 
though I be, to him I am all in all ; to you, Mr. Vane, to 
you a memory — the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a 
month, hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped.'’ 

She passed from him — passed away from the flowers and 
the starlight ; and when Giraham, — recovering from the stun 
of her crushing words, and with the haughty mien and step 
of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his hopes, lean- 
ing for support upon his pride, — when Graham re-entered 
the room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who 
was still exchanging whispered words with Valerie. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham entered 
Alain’s apartment. “ I am glad to tell you,” said the Mar- 
quis, gayly, “ that the box has arrived, and we will very soon 
examine its contents. Breakfast claims precedence.” During 
the meal Alain was in gay spirits, and did not at first notice 
the gloomy countenance and abstracted mood of his guest. 
At length, surprised at the dull response to his lively sallies 
on the part of a man generally so pleasant in the frankness 
of his speech and the cordial ring of his sympathetic laugh, 
it occurred to him that the change in Graham must be 
ascribed to something that had gone wrong in the meeting 
with Isaura the evening before ; and, remembering the curt- 
ness with which Graham had implied disinclination to con- 


THE PARISIANS. 


325 


verse about the fair Italian, be felt perplexed bow to reconcile 
tbe impulse of bis good nature with tbe discretion imposed 
on bis good breeding. At all events, a compliment to tbe 
lady whom Grabam bad so admired could do ho barm. 

“ How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last nigbt !” 

“ Did sbe? It seemed to me that, in bealtb at least, sbe 
did not look very well. Have you beard wbat day M. Tbiers 
will speak on tbe war ?” 

“ Tbiers ? No. Wbo cares about Tbiers ? Tbank Heaven,- 
bis day is past ! I don’t know any unmarried woman in Paris, 
not even Valerie — I mean Mademoiselle Duplessis — wbo lias 
so exquisite a taste in dress as Mademoiselle Cicogna. Gen- 
erally speaking, tbe taste of a female author is atrocious.” 

“ Heally, I did not observe ber dress. I am no critic on 
subjects so dainty as tbe dress of ladies or tbe tastes of 
female authors.” 

“Pardon me,” said tbe heau Marguis, gravely; “as to 
dress, I think that is so essential a thing in the mind of 
woman, that no man who cares about women ought to disdain 
critical study of it. In woman refinement of character is 
never found in vulgarity of dress. I have only observed that 
truth since I came up from Bretagne.” 

“ I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in 
Bretagne books which very few not being professed scholars 
have ever read at Paris ; and possibly you may remember 
that Horace ascribes tbe most exquisite refinement in dress 
denoted by tbe untranslatable words ‘ simplex munditiis' to a 
lady wbo was not less distinguished by tbe ease and rapidity 
with which sbe could change ber affection. Of course that 


326 


THE PARISIANS. 


allusion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna ; but tliere 
are many other exquisitely dressed ladies of Paris of whom 
an ill-fated admirer 

‘fidem 

Mutatosque deos debit.' 

Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to the box of 
letters.” 

The box being produced and unlocked, Alain looked with 
conscientious care at its contents before he passed over to 
Graham’s inspection a few epistles, in which the Englishman 
immediately detected the same handwriting as that of the 
letter from Louise which Richard King had bequeathed to 
him. 

They were arranged and numbered chronologically. 

Letter I. 

“ Dear M. le Marquis, — How can I thank you sufficiently 
for obtaining and remitting to me those certificates ? You are 
too aware of the unhappy episode in my life not to know 
how inestimable is the service you render me. I am saved 
all further molestation from the man who had indeed no right 
over my freedom, but whose persecution might compel me to 
the scandal and disgrace of an appeal to the law for protection 
and the avowal of the illegal marriage into which I was 
duped. I would rather he torn limb from limb by wild 
horses, like the Queen in the history books, than dishonor 
myself and the ancestry which I may*at least claim on the 
mother’s side, by proclaiming that I had lived with that low 
Englishman as his wife, when I was only — Oh, heavens, I 
cannot conclude the sentence ! 

“No, Mons. le Marquis, I am in no want of the pecuniary 


THE PARISIANS. 


327 


aid you so generously wish to press on me. Though I know 
not where to address my poor dear uncle, — though I doubt, 
even if I did, whether I could venture to confide to him the 
secret known only to yourself as to the name I now bear — 
and if he hear of me at all he must believe me dead, yet I 
have enough left of the money he last remitted to me for 
present support : and when that fails, I think what with my 
knowledge of English and such otlier slender accomplish- 
ments as I possess I could maintain myself as a teacher or 
governess in some German family. At all events, I will write 
to you again soon, and I entreat you to let me know all you 
can learn about my uncle. I feel so grateful to you for your 
just disbelief of the horrible calumny which must be so 
intolerably galling to a man so proud, and, whatever his 
errors, so incapable of a baseness. 

“ Direct to me Poste restante^ Augsburg. 

“ Yours, with all consideration, 

a 

Letter II. 

(^Seven months after the date of Letter I') 

Augsburg. 

“ Dear M. le Marquis, — I thank you for your kind little 
note informing me of the pains you have taken, as yet with no 
result, to ascertain what has become of my unfortunate uncle. 
My life since I last wrote has been a very quiet one. I have 
been teaching among a few families here; and among my 
pupils are two little girls of very high birth. They have 
taken so great a fancy to me that their mother has just 
asked me to come and reside at their house as governess. 
What wonderfully kind hearts those Germans have, — so 
simple, so truthful ! They raise no troublesome questions, — 
accept my own story implicitly.” Here follow a few common- 
place sentences about the German character, and a postscript 


328 , 


THE PARISIANS. 


I go into my new home next week. When you hear more 
of my uncle, direct to me at the Countess von E-udesheim, 
Schloss N M , near Berlin.” 

“ Budesheim !” Could this be the relation, po^ibly the 
wife, of the Count von Budesheim with whom Graham had 
formed acquaintance last year ? 

Letter III. 

(^Between three and four years after the date of the lasfS) 

“ You startle me indeed, dear M. le Marquis. My 
uncle said to have been recognized in Algeria, under another 
name, a soldier in the Algerine army? My dear, proud, 
luxurious uncle ! Ah, I cannot believe it, any more than 
you do ; but I long eagerly for such further news as you can 
learn of him. For myself I shall perhaps surprise you when 
I say I am about to be married. Nothing can exceed the 
amiable kindness I have received from the Budesheims since 
I have been in their house. For the last year especially I 
have been treated on equal terms as one of the family. 
Among the habitual visitors at the house is a gentleman of 
noble birth, but not of rank too high nor of fortune too 
great to make a marriage with the French widowed gov- 
erness a misalliance. I am sure that he loves me sincerely ; 
and he is the only man I ever met whose love I have cared 
to win. We are to be married in the course of the year. Of 
course he is ignorant of my painful history, and will never 

learn it. And, after all, Louise I) is dead. In the 

home to which I am about to remove, there is no probability 
that the wretched Englishman can ever cross my path. My 
secret is as safe with you as in the grave that holds her whom 

in the name of Louise D you once loved. Henceforth 

I shall trouble you no more with my letters ; but if you hear 
anything decisively authentic of my uncle’s fate, write me a 


THE PARISIANS. 


329 


line at any time, directed, as before, to Madame M , in- 

closed to the Countess von Rudesheim. 

“ And accept for all the kindness you have ever shown me, 
as to one whom you did not disdain to call a kinswoman, the 
assurance of my undying gratitude. In the alliance she now 
makes, your kinswoman does not discredit the name through 
which she is connected with the yet loftier line of Roche- 
briant.” 

To this letter the late Marquis had appended, in pencil, 
“ Of course a Rochebriant never denies the claim of a kins- 
woman, even though a drawing-master’s daughter. Beautiful 
creature, Louise, but a termagant! I could not love Venus 
if she were a termagant. L.’s head turned by the unlucky 
discovery that her mother was noble. In one form or other, 
every woman has the same disease — vanity. Name of her 
intended not mentioned — easily found out.” 

The next letter was dated May 7, 1859, on black-edged 
paper, and contained but these lines : “ I was much comforted 
by your kind visit yesterday, dear Marquis. My affliction 
has been heavy ; but for the last two years my poor hus- 
band’s conduct has rendered my life unhappy, and I am re- 
covering the shock of his sudden death. It is true that I 
and the children are left very ill provided for ; but I cannot 
accept your generous offer of aid. Have no fear as to my 
future fate. Adieu, my dear Marquis! This will reach 
you just before you start for Naples. Bon voyaged There 
was no address on this note — no post-mark on the envelope — 
evidently sent by hand. 

The last note, dated 1861, March 20, was briefer than its 


330 


THE PARISIANS. 


predecessor. “ I have taken your advice, dear Marquis, 
and, overcoming all scruples, I have accepted his kind offer, 
on the condition that I am never to be taken to England. I 
had no option in this marriage. I can now own to you that 
my poverty had become urgent. — Yours, with inalienable 
gratitude, •” 

This last note, too, was without .post-mark, and as evidently 
sent by hand. 

. “ There are no other letters, then, from this writer ?” asked 
Graham ; “ and no further clue as to her existence ?” 

“ None that I have discovered ; and I see now why I pre- 
served these letters. There is nothing in their contents not 
creditable to my poor father. They show how capable he 
was of good-natured disinterested kindness towards even a 
distant relation of whom he could certainly not have been 
proud, judging not only by his own penciled note, or by the 
writer’s condition as a governess, but by her loose sentiments 
as to the marriage-tie. I have not the slightest idea who 
she could be. I never, at least, heard of one connected, how- 
ever distantly, with my family, whom I could identify with 
the writer of these letters.” 

“ I may hold them a short time in my possession ?” 

“ Pardon me a preliminary question. If I may venture to 
form a conjecture, the object of your search must be con- 
nected with your countryman whom the lady politely calls 
the ‘ wretched Englishman but I own I should not like to 
lend, through these letters, a pretense to any steps that may 
lead to a scandal in which my father’s name or that of any 
member of my family could be mixed up.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


331 


‘‘ Marquis, it is to prevent the possibility of all scandal 
that I ask you to trust these letters to my discretion.” 

“ Foi de gcntilhomme 

“ Foi de gentilhomme /” 

“ Take them. When and where shall we meet again ?” 

“Soon, I trust; but I must leave Paris this evening. I 
am bound to Berlin in quest of this Countess von Budes- 
heim ; and I fear that in a very few days intercourse be- 
tween France and the German frontier will be closed upon 
travelers.” 

After a few more words, not worth recording, the two young 
men shook hands and parted. 


CHAPTER V. 

It was with an interest languid and listless indeed com- 
pared with that which he would have felt a day before, that 
Graham mused over the remarkable advances towards the dis- 
covery of Louise Duval which were made in the letters he 
had perused. She had married, then, first a foreigner whom 
she spoke of as noble, and whose name and residence could 
be easily found through the Countess von Rudesheim. The 
marriage did not seem to have been a happy one. Left a 
widow in reduced circumstances, she had married again, evi- 
dently without affection. She was living so late as 1861, 
and she had children living in 1859 : was the child referred 
to by Richard King one of them ? 


332 


THE PARISIANS. 


The tone and style of the letters served to throw some light 
on the character of the writer : they evinced pride, stubborn 
self-will, and unamiable hardness of nature ; but her rejection 
of all pecuniary aid from a man like the late Marquis de 
Rochebriant betokened a certain dignity of sentiment. She 
was evidently, whatever her strange ideas about her first 
marriage with Richard King, no vulgar woman of gallantry ; 
and there must have been some sort of charm about her 
to have excited a friendly interest in a kinsman so remote, 
and a man of pleasure so selfish, as her high-born corre- 
spondent. 

But what now, so far as concerned his own happiness, was 
the hope, the probable certainty, of a‘ speedy fulfillment of 
the trust bequeathed to him ? Whether the result, in the 
death of the mother, and more especially of the child, left 
him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his fortune to a 
modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and 
fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recover- 
ing from the shock of hearing from Isaura’s lips that she 
was irrevocably afi&anced to another were not those of self- 
reproach. They were those of intense bitterness against her 
who, if really so much attached to him as he had been led to 
hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her heart to 
marriage with another. This bitterness was no doubt unjust ; 
but I believe it to be natural to men of a nature so proud and 
of affections so intense as Graham’s, under similar defeats of 
hope. Resentment is the first impulse in a man loving with 
the whole ardor of his soul, rejected, no matter why or 
wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause to believe 


THE PARISIANS. 


333 


he himself was beloved ; and though Graham’s standard of 
honor was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not 
view honor in the same light as woman does, when involved 
in analogous difficulties of position. Graham conscientiously 
thought that if Isaura so loved him as to render distasteful 
an engagement to another which could only very recently 
have been contracted, it would be more honorable frankly so 
to tell the accepted suitor than to leave him in ignorance 
that her heart was estranged. But these engagements are 
very solemn things with girls like Isaura, and hers was no 
ordinary obligation of woman-honor. Had the accepted 
one been superior in rank, fortune, all that flatters the 
ambition of woman in the choice of marriage — had he been 
resolute, and strong, and self-dependent amid the trials and 
perils of life, then possibly the woman’s honor might And 
excuse in escaping the penalties of its pledge. But the poor, 
ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked to her as his 
•saving angel in body, in mind, and soul — to say to him, 
“ Give me back my freedom,” would be to abandon him to 
death and to sin. But Graham could not of course divine 
why what he as a man thought right was to Isaura as a 
woman impossible; and he returned to his old prejudiced 
notion that there is no real depth and ardor of afiection for 
human lovers in the poetess whose mind and heart are de- 
voted to the creation of imaginary heroes. Absorbed in 
reverie, he took his way slowly and with downcast looks towards 
the British embassy, at which it was well to ascertain whether 
the impending war yet necessitated special passports for 
Germany. 


334 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Bon-jour^ clier annij' said a pleasant voice ; “ and how 
long have you been at Paris?” 

“ Oh, my dear M. Savarin ! Charmed to see you looking 
so well I Madame well too, I trust ? My kindest regards to 
her. I have been in Paris but a day or two, and I leave this 
evening.” 

“ So soon ? The war frightens you away, I suppose. Which 
way are you going now?” 

“ To the British embassy.” 

“ Well, I will go with you so far — it is in my own direction. 
I have to call at the charming Italian’s with congratulations 
■ — on news I only heard this morning.” 

“ You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna — and the news that de- 
mands congratulations — her approaching marriage !” 

'‘’‘Mon Dieu! when could you have heard of that?” 

“ Last night, at the house of M. Duplessis.” 

“ Parhleu I I shall scold her well for confiding to her new 
friend Valerie the secret she kept from her old friends, my 
wife and myself.” 

“ By the way,” said Graham, with a tone of admirably- 
feigned indifference, “who is the happy man? That part 
of the secret I did not hear.” 

“ Can’t you guess ?’ 

“ No.” 

“ Gustave Bameau.” 

“Ah!” Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and shrill was 
his cry. “Ah! I ought indeed to have guessed that!” 

“ Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make up the mar- 


THE PARISIANS. 


335 


riage. I hope it may turn out well ; certainly it will be his 
salvation. May it be for her happiness !” 

“No doubt of that ! Two poets — born for each other, I 
daresay. Adieu, my dear SavarinI Here we are at the 
embassy.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

That evening Glraham found himself in the coupi of the 
express train to Strasbourg. He had sent to engage the whole 
coujpe to himself, but that was impossible. One place was 
bespoken as far as C , after which Graham might prose- 

cute his journey alone on paying for the three places. 

When he took his seat, another man was in the farther 
corner, whom he scarcely noticed. The train shot rapidly on 
for some leagues. Profound silence in the cowpe, save at 
moments those heavy impatient sighs that come from the 
v^ery depths of the heart, and of which he who sighs is un- 
conscious, burst from the Englishman’s lips, and drew on him 
the observant side-glance of his fellow-traveler. 

At length the fellow-traveler said, in a very good English, 
though with French accent, “ Would you object, sir, to my 
lighting my little carriage lantern? I am in the habit of 
reading in the night train, and the wretched lamp they give 
us does not permit that. But if you wish to sleep, and my 
lantern would prevent your doing so, consider my request 
unasked.” 


336 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ You are most courteous, sir. Pray light your lantern — 
that will not interfere with my sleep.” 

As Graham thus answered, far away from the place and the 
moment as his thoughts were, it yet faintly struck him that he 
had heard that voice before. 

The man produced a small lantern, which he attached to 
the window-sill, and drew forth from a small leathern bag 
sundry newspapers and pamphlets. Graham flung himself 
back, and in a minute or so again came his sigh. “Allow me 
to offer you these evening journals — you may not have had 
time to read them before starting,” said the fellow-traveler, 
leaning forward, and extending the newspapers with one hand, 
while with the other he lifted his lantern. Graham turned, 
and the faces of the two men were close to each other — Graham 
with his traveling-cap drawn over his brows, and the other with 
head uncovered. 

“ Monsieur Lebeau !” 

“^on-sofr, Mr. Lamb!” 

Again silence for a moment or so. Monsieur Lebeau then 
broke it : 

“ I think, Mr. Lamb, that in better society than that of 
the Faubourg Montmartre you are known under another 
name.” 

Graham had no heart then for the stage-play of a part, 
and answered, with quiet haughtiness, “ Possibly — and what 
name?” 

“ Graham Vane. And, sir,” continued Lebeau, with a 
haughtiness equally quiet, but somewhat more menacing, 
“ since we two gentlemen find ourselves thus close, do I ask 


THE PARISIANS. 


337 


too mucli if I inquire why you condescended to seek my 
acquaintance in disguise?” 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte de Maul4on, when you talk of dis- 
guise, is it too much to inquire why my acquaintance was 
accepted by Monsieur Lebeau ?” 

“ Ha ! Theii you confess that it was Victor de Mauleon 
whom you sought when you first visited the Cafe Jean 
Jacques?" 

“ Frankly I confess it.” 

Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back and seemed to reflect. 

“ I see ! Solely for the purpose of learning whether Victor 
de Mauleon could give you any information about Louise 
Duval. Is it so ?” 

“ Monsieur le Vicomte, you say truly.” 

Again M. Lebeau paused as if in reflection ; and Graham, 
in that state of mind when a man who may most despise and 
detest the practice of dueling may yet feel a thrill of delight 
if some homicide would be good enough to put him out of 
his misery, flurig aside his cap, lifted his broad frank fore- 
head, and stamped his boot impatiently as if to provoke a 
quarrel. 

M. Lebeau lowered his spectacles, and, with those calm, 
keen, searching eyes of his, gazed at the Englishman. 

“It strikes me,” he said, with a smile, the fascination of 
which not even those faded whiskers could disguise, “ it 
strikes me that there are two ways in which gentlemen such 
as you and I are can converse: first, with reservation and 
guard against each other; secondly, with perfect openness. 
Perhaps of the two I have more need of reservation and wary 
VoL. II.— p 22 


338 


THE PARISIANS. 


guard against any stranger than you have. Allow me to 
propose the alternative — perfect openness. What say you ?” 
and he extended his hand. 

“ Perfect openness,” answered Graham, softened into sud- 
den liking for this once terrible swordsman, and shaking, as 
an Englishman shakes, the hand held out to him in peace by 
the man from whom he had anticipitated quarrel. 

“ Permit me now, before you address any questions to me, 
to put one to you. How did you learn that Victor de Maul4on 
was identical with Jean Lebeau?” 

“ I heard that from an agent of the police.” 

“Ah!” < 

“Whom I consulted as to the means of ascertaining 
whether Louise Duval was alive, — if so, where she could be 
found.” 

“ T thank you very much for your information. I had no 
notion that the police of Paris had divined the original alias 
of poor Monsieur Lebeau, though something occurred at 
Lyons which made me suspect it. Strange that the govern- 
ment, knowing through the police that Victor de Mauleon, a 
writer they had no reason to favor, had been in so humble 
a position, should never, even in their official journals, have 
thought it prudent to say so 1 But, now I think of it, what 
if they had ? They could prove nothing against Jean Lebeau. 
They could but say, ‘ Jean Lebeau is suspected to be too warm 
a lover of liberty, too earnest a friend of the people, and Jean 
Lebeau is the editor of “Ze Sens Commun."' Why, that 
assertion would havfe made Victor de Mauleon the hero of the 
Reds, the last thing a prudent government could desire. I 


THE PARISIANS. 


339 


thank you cordially for your frank reply. Now, what question 
would you put to me?” 

In one word, all you can tell me about Louise Duval.” 

“ You shall have it. I had heard vaguely in my young 
days that a half-sister of mine by my father’s first marriage 
with Mademoiselle de Beauvilliers had — when in advanced 
middle life he married a second time — conceived a dislike for 
her mother-in-law, and, being of age, with an independen; 
fortune of her own, had quitted the house, taken up her resi- 
dence with an elderly female relative, and there had contracted 
a marriage with a man who gave her lessons in drawing. After 
that marriage, which my father in vain tried to prevent, my 
sister was renounced by her family. That was all I knew till, 
after I came into my inheritance by the death of both my 
parents, I learned from my father’s confidential lawyer that 
the drawing-master, M. Duval, had soon dissipated his wife’s 
fortune, become a widower with one child — a girl — and fallen 
into great distress. He came to my father, begging for pecu- 
niary aid. My father, though by no means rich, consented 
to allow him a yearly pension, on condition that he never re- 
vealed to his child her connection with our family. The man 
agreed to the condition, and called at my father’s lawyer 
quarterly for his annuity. But the lawyer informed me that 
this deduction from my income had ceased, that M. Duval 
had not for a year called or sent for the sum due to him, and 
that he must therefore be dead. One day my vailet informed 
me that a young lady wished to see me — in those days young 
ladies very often called on me. I desired her to be shown in. 
There entered a young creature, almost of my own age, who, 


340 


THE PARISI ANS. 


to my amazement, saluted me as uncle. This was the child 
of my half-sister. Her father had been dead several months, 
fulfilling very faithfully the condition on which he had held 
his pension, and the girl never dreaming of the claims that, 
if wise, poor child, she ought not to have cared for, viz., — ■ 
to that obsolete useless pauper birthright, a branch on the 
family tree of a French noble. But in pinch of circumstance, 
and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her father 
had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had 
received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my 
father, which indisputably proved that she was grandchild 
to the feu Yicomte de Mauleon, and niece to myself. Her 
story as told to me was very pitiable. Conceiving herself to 
be nothing higher in birth than daughter to this drawing- 
master, at his death, poor penniless orphan that she was, she 
had accepted the hand of an English student of medicine 
whom she did not care for. Miserable with this man, on 
finding by the docundents I refer to that she was my niece, 
she came to me for comfort and counsel. What counsel could 
I or any man give to her but to make the best of what had 
happened, and live with her husband ? But then she started 
another question. It seems that she had been talking with 
some one, I think her landlady, or some other woman with 
whom she had made acquaintance." Was she legally married 
to this man? Had he not entrapped her ignorance into a 
false marriage ? This became a grave question, and I sent at 
once to my lawyer. On hearing the circumstances, he at 
once declared that the marriage was not legal according to the 
laws of France. But doubtless her English soi-disant hus- 


THE PARISIANS. 


341 


band was not cognizant of the French law, and a legal mar- 
riage could with his assent be at once solemnized. Monsieur 
Vane, I cannot find words to convey to you the joy that poor 
girl showed in her face and in her words when she learned 
that she was not bound to pass her life with that man as his 
wife. It was in vain to talk and reason with her. Then arovse 
the other question, scarcely less important. True, the mar- 
riage was not legal ; but would it not be better on all accounts 
to take steps to have it formally annulled, thus freeing her 
from the harassment of any claim the Englishman might ad- 
vance, and enabling her to establish the facts in a right posi- 
tion, not injurious to her honor in the eyes of any future 
suitor to her hand ? She would not hear of such a proposal. 
She declared that she could not bring to the family she pined 
to re-enter the scandal of disgrace. To allow that she had 
made such a mesalliance wo*uld be bad enough in itself ; but 
to proclaim to the world that though nominally the wife she 
had in fact been only the mistress of this medical student — 
she would rather throw herself into the Seine. All she de- 
sired was to find some refuge, some hiding-place for a time, 
whence she could write to the man informing him that he 
had no lawfu. hold on her. Doubtless he would not seek 
then to molest her. He would return to his own country 
and be effaced from her life. And then, her story unknown^ 
she might form a more suitable alliance. Fiery young creature 
though she was — true De Mauleon in being so fiery — she in- 
terested me strongly. I should say that she was wonderfully 
handsome ; and, though imperfectly educated and brought up 
in circumstances so lowly, there was nothing common about 


342 


THE PARISIANS. 


her — a certain je ne sais quoi of stateliness and race. At all 
events, she did with me what she wished. I agreed to aid 
her desire of a refuge and hiding-place. Of course I could 
not lodge her in my own apartment, but I induced a female 
relation of her mother’s, an old lady living at Versailles, to 
receive her, stating her birth, but of course concealing her 
illegal marriage. 

“ From time to time I went to see her. But one day I 
found this restless bright-plumaged bird flown. Among the 
ladies who visited at her relative’s house was a certain Madame 
Marigny, a very pretty young widow. Madame Marigny and 
Louise formed a sudden and intimate friendship. The widow 
was moving from Versailles into an apartment at Paris, 
and invited Louise to share it. She had consented. I was 
not pleased at this ; for the widow was too young, and too 
much of a coquette, to he a safe companion to Louise. But 
though professing much gratitude and great regard for me, I 
had no power of controlling the poor girl’s actions. Her 
nominal husband, meanwhile, had left France, and nothing 
more was heard or known of him. I saw that the best thin"* 

o 

that could possibly befall Louise was marriage with some one 
rich enough to gratify her taste for luxury and pomp; and 
that if such a marriage offered itself she might be induced 
to free it from all possible embarrassment by procuring the 
annulment of the former, from which she had hitherto shrunk 
in such revolt. This opportunity presented itself. A man 
already rich, and in a career that promised to make him in- 
finitely richer, an associate of mine in those days when I was 
rapidly squandering the remnant of my inheritance — this man 


THE PARISIANS. 


343 


saw her at the opera in company with Madame Marigny, fell 
violently in love with her, and, ascertaining her relationship to 
me, besought an introduction. I was delighted to give it; 
and, to say the truth, I was then so reduced to the bottom of 
my casket, I felt that it was becoming impossible for me to 
continue the aid I had hitherto given to Louise, and what 
then would become of her? I thought it fair to tell 
Louvier ” 

“ Louvier — the financier?” 

“ Ah, that was a slip of the tongue ; but no matter ; there 
is no reason for concealing his name. I thought it right, I 
say, to tell Louvier confidentially the history of the unfor- 
tunate illegal marriage. It did not damp his ardor. He 
wooed her to the best of his power, but she evidently took 
him into great dislike. One day she sent for me in much 
excitement, showed me some advertisements in the French 
journals which, though not naming her, evidently pointed at 
her and must have been dictated by her soi-disant husband. 
The advertisements might certainly lead to her discovery if 
she remained in Paris. She entreated my consent to remove 
elsewhere. Madame Marigny had her own reason for leaving 
Paris, and would accompany her. I supplied her with the 
necessary means, and a day or two afterwards she and her 
friend departed, as I understood, for Brussels. I received no 
letter from her ; and my own affairs so seriously preoccupied 
me that poor Louise might have passed altogether out of my 
thoughts, had it not been for the suitor she had left in despair 
behind. Louvier besought me to ascertain her address ; but 
I could gi^jre him no other clue to it than that she said she 


344 


THE PARISIANS. 


was going to Brussels, but should soon remove to some quiet 
village. It was not a Ion" time — I can’t remember how 

O O 

long — it might be several weeks, perhaps two or three months, 
when I received a short note from her stating that she waited 
for a small remittance, the last she would accept from me ; 
as she was resolved, so soon as her health would permit, to 
find means to maintain herself — and telling me to direct to 
her, Pode restanfe, Aix-la-Chapelle. I sent hei che sum she 
asked^ perhaps a little more, but with a confession reluctantly 
wrung from me that I was a ruined man ; and I urged her to 
think very seriously before she refused the competence and 
position which a union with M. Louvier would insure. 

“This last consideration so pressed on me that, when 
Louvier called on me, I think that day or the next, I gave 
him Louise’s note, and told him that, if he were still as 
much in love with her as ever, les absents ont tovjours tort, and 
he had better go to Aix-la-Chapelle and find her out ; that 
he had my hearty approval of his wooing, and consent to his 
marriage," though I still urged the wisdom and fairness, if she 
would take the preliminary step — which, after all, the French 
law frees as much as possible from pain and scandal — of 
annulling the irregular marriage into which her childlike 
youth had been decoyed. 

“ Louvier left me for Aix-la-Chapelle. The '’’ery next day 
came that cruel affliction which made me a prey to the most 
intolerable calumny, which robbed me of every friend, which 
sent me forth from my native country penniless, and resolved 
to be nameless — until — until — well, until my hour could 
come again, — every dog, if not hanged, has its day ; — when 


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345 


that affliction befell me, I quitted France, heard no more of 
Louvier, nor of Louise ; indeed, no letter addressed to me at 
Paris would have reached ” 

The man paused here, evidently with painful emotion. lie 
resumed in the quiet matter-of-fact way in which he had 
commenced his narrative : 

“ Louise had altogether faded out of my remembrance until 
your question revived it. As it happened, the question came 
at the moment when I meditated resuming my real name and 
social position. In so doing, I should, of course, come in 
contact with my old acquaintance Louvier ; and the name of 
Louise was necessarily associated with his. I called on him 
and made myself known. The slight information I gave you 
as to my niece was gleaned from him. I may now say more. 
It appears that when he arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle he found 
that Louise Duval had left it a day or two previously, and, 
according to scandal, had been for some time courted by a 
wealthy and noble lover, whom she had gone to Munich to 
meet. Louvier believed this tale, quitted Aix indignantly, 
and never heard more of her. The probability is, M. Yane, 
that she must have been long dead. But if living still, I 
feel quite sure that she will communicate with me some day 
or other. Now that I have reappeared in Paris in my own 
name — entered into a career that, for good or for evil, must 
ere long bring my name very noisily before the public — 
Louise cannot fail to hear of my existence and my where 
abouts ; and, unless I am utterly mistaken as to her character 
she will assuredly inform me of her own. Oblige me with 
your address, and in that case I will let you know. Of 

p* 


346 


THE PARISIANS. 


course I take for granted the assurance you gave me last 
year, that you only desire to discover her in order to render 
her some benefit, not to injure or molest her?” 

“ Certainly. To that assurance I pledge my honor. Any 
letter with which you may favor me had better be directed 
to my London address ; here is my card. But, M. le Vi- 
comte, there is one point on which pray pardon me if I 
question you still. Had you no suspicion that there was one 
reason why this lady might have quitted Paris so hastily, 
and have so shrunk from the thought of a marriage so advan- 
tageous, in a worldly point of view, as that with M. Louvier, 
— namely, that she anticipated the probability of becoming 
the mother of a child by the man whom she refused to 
acknowledge as a husband ?” 

“ That idea did not strike me until you asked me if she 
had a child. Should your conjecture be correct, it would 
obviously increase her repugnance to apply for the annul- 
ment of her illegal marriage. But if Louise is still living 
and comes across me, I do not doubt that, the motives for 
concealment no longer operating, she will confide to me the 
truth. Since we have been talking together thus frankly, I 
suppose I may fairly ask whether I do not guess correctly in 
supposing that this soi-disant husband, whose name I forget 

— Mac something, perhaps Scotch — I think she said he 

was Ecossais , — is dead, and hacs left by will some legacy to 
Louise and any child she may have borne to him ?” 

“ Not exactly so. The man, as you say, is dead ; but he 
bequeathed no legacy to the lady who did not hold herself 
married to him. But there are those connected with him 


THE PARISIANS. 


347 


who, knowing the history, think that some compensation is 
due for the wrong so unconsciously done to her, and yet more 
to any issue of a marriage not meant to be irregular or illegal. 
Permit me now to explain why I sought you in another guise 
and name than my own. I could scarcely place in M. Lebeau 
the confidence which I now unreservedly place in the Vicomte 
de Mauleon.” 

“ Cela va sans dire. You believed, then, that calumny 
about the jewels ; you do not believe it now ?” 

“ Now ! my amazement is that any one who had known 
you could believe it.” 

“ Oh, how often, and with tears of rage, in my exile — my 
wanderings — ^have I asked that question of myself! That 
rage has ceased; and I have but one feeling left for that 
credulous, fickle Paris, of which one day I was the idol, the 
next the by- word. Well, a man sometimes plays chess more 
skillfully for having been long a mere bystander. He under- 
stands better how to move, and when to sacrifice the pieces. 
Politics, M. Vane, is the only exciting game left to me at my 
years. At yours, there is still that of love. How time flies ! 
we are nearing the station at which I descend. I have kins- 
folk in these districts. They are not Imperialists ; they are 
said to be powerful in the department. But before I apply to 
them in my own name, I think it prudent that M. Lebeau 
should quietly ascertain what is their real strength, and what 
would be the prospects of success if Victor de Mauleon offered 
himself as depute at the next election. Wish him joy, M. 
Vane 1 If he succeed, you will hear of him some day 
crowned in the Capitol, or hurled from the Tarpeian rock.” 


S48 


THE PARISIANS. 


Here the train stopped. The false Leheau gathered up 
his papers, readjusted his spectacles and his bag, descended 
lightly, and, pressing Graham’s hand as he paused at the 
door, said, “ Be sure I will not forget your address if I have 
anything to say. Bon voyage /” 


CHAPTER VII. 

Graham continued his journey to Strasbourg. On arriving 
there he felt very unwell. Strong though his frame was, the 
anguish and self-struggle through which he had passed since 
the day he had received in London Mrs. Morley’s letter, till 
that on which he had finally resolved on his course of conduct 
at Paris, and the shock which had annihilated his hopes in 
Isaura’s rejection, had combined to exhaust its endurance, 
and fever had already commenced when he took hLs place in 
the cowpi. If there be a thing which a man should not do 
when his system is undermined, and his pulse between ninety 
and a hundred, it is to travel all night by a railway express. 
Nevertheless, as the Englishman’s will was yet stronger than 
his frame, he would not give himself more than an hour’s rest, 
and again started for Berlin. Long before he got to Berlin, the 
will failed him as well as the frame. He was lifted out of the 
carriage, taken to a hotel in a small German town, and six 
hours afterwards he was delirious. It was fortunate for him 
that under such circumstances plenty of money and Scott’s 


THE PARISTANS. 


349 


circular-notes for some hundreds were found in his pocket-book, 
BO that he did not fail to receive attentive nursing and skillful 
medical treatment. There, for the present, I must leave him — 
leave him for how long ? But any village apothecary could say 
that fever such as his must run its course. He was still in bed, 
and very dimly — and that but at times- — conscious, when the 
German armies were gathering round the penfold of Sedan. 


CHAPTEK YIIL 

When the news of -the disastrous day at Sedan reached 
Paris, the first effect was that of timid consternation. There 
were a few cries of BicMancel fewer still of Vive la RS 
puhliquel among the motley crowds; but they were faint, 
and chiefly by ragged gamim. A small body repaired to 
Trochu, and offered him the sceptre, which he politely de- 
clined. A more important and respectable body — for it com- 
prised the majority of the Corps Legislatif - — urged Palikao 
to accept the temporary dictatorship, which the War Minister 
declined with equal politeness. In both these overtures it was 
clear that the impulse of the proposers was towards any form 
of government rather than republican. The scrgens de villa 
were sufficient that day to put down riot. They did make a 
charge on a mob, which immediately ran away. 

The morning of that day the Council of Ten were sum- 
moned by Lebeau — minv^ only Rameau, who was still too unwell 


J50 


THE PARISIANS. 


to attend, and the Belgian, not then at Paris ; but their places 
were supplied by the two traveling members, who had been 
absent from the meeting before recorded. These were con- 
spirators better known in history than those I have before 
described ; professional conspirators — personages who from 
their youth upwards had done little else but conspire. Fol- 
lowing the discreet plan pursued elsewhere throughout this 
humble work, I give their names other than they bore. One, 
a very swarthy and ill-favored man, between forty and fifty, I 
call Paul Grimm — by origin a German, but by rearing and 
character French ; from the hair on his head, staring up 
rough and ragged as a bramble-bush, to the soles of small 
narrow feet, shod with dainty care, he was a personal coxcomb, 
and spent all he could spare on his dress. A clever man, not 
ill educated — a vehement and effective speaker at a club. 
Vanity and an amorous temperament had made him a con- 
spirator, since he fancied he interested the ladies more in that 
capacity than in any other. His companion, Edgar Ferrier, 
would have been a journalist, only hitherto his opinions had 
found no readers ; the opinions were those of Marat. He 
rejoiced in thinking that his hour for glory, so long deferred, 
had now arrived. He was thoroughly sincere : his father and 
grandfather had died in a mad-house. Both these men, in- 
significant in ordinary times, were likely to become of terrible 
importance in the crisis of a revolution. They both had great 
power with the elements that form a Parisian mob. The in- 
structions given to these members of the Council by Lebeau 
were brief : they were summed up in the one word Decheance, 
The formidable nature of a council apparently so meanly con- 


THE PARISIANS. 


351 


Btituted became strikingly evident at that moment — first, be- 
cause it was so small in number, while each one of these could 
put in movement a large section of the populace ; secondly, be- 
cause, unlike a revolutionary club or a numerous association, 
no time was wasted in idle speeches, and all were under the 
orders of one man of clear head and resolute purpose ; and 
thirdly, and above all, because one man supplied the treasury, 
and money for an object desired was liberally given and 
promptly at hand. The meeting did not last ten minutes, and 
about two hours afterwards its effects were visible. From 
Montmartre and Belleville and Montretout poured streams of 
ouvriers with whom Armand Monnier was a chief and the 
Mededn des Pauvres an oracle, Grimm and Ferrier headed 
other detachments that startled the well-dressed idlers on the 
Boulevards. The stalwart figure of the Pole was seen on the 
Place de la Concorde, towering amidst other refugees, among 
whom glided the Italian champion of humanity. The cry 
of DecMance became louder. But as yet there were only few 
cries of Vive la Repuhlique! — such a cry was not on the 
orders issued by Lebeau. At midnight the crowd round the 
hall of the Corps Ligislatif was large : cries of La DecMance 
loud — -a few cries, very feeble, of Vive la Repuhlique I 

What followed on the 4th — the marvelous audacity with 
which half a dozen lawyers belonging to a pitiful minority in 
a Chamber elected by universal suffrage walked into the Hotel 
de Ville and said, “ The Republic is established, and we are 
its government” — history has told too recently for me to nar- 
rate. On the evening of the 5th the Council of Ten met 
again: the Pole and the Italian radiant; Grimm and Ferrier 


352 


THE PARISIANS. 


much excited and rather drunk ; the Medecin des Pauvres 
thoughtful ; and Armand Moniiier gloomy. A rumor has 
spread that General Trochu, in accepting the charge imposed 
on him, has exacted from the government the solemn as- 
surance of respect for God and for the rights of Family and 
Property. The Atheist is very indignant at the assent of the 
government to the first proposition ; Monnier equally indig- 
nant at the assent to the second and third. What has that 
honest ouvrier conspired for, — what has he suffered for, — 
of late nearly starved for — but to marry another man’s wife, 
getting rid of his own, and to legalize a participation in the 
property of his employer ? — and now he is no better off" than 
before. “ There must be another revolution,” he whispers to 
the Atheist. 

“ Certainly,” whispers back the Atheist: ‘‘he who desires 
to better this world must destroy all belief in another.” 

The conclave was assembled when Lebeau entered by the 
private door. He took his place at the head of the table, 
and, fixing on the group eyes that emitted a cold gleam 
through the spectacles, thus spoke : 

“ Messieurs, or Citoyens, which ye will — I no longer call 
you confreres — you have disobeyed or blundered my instruc- 
tipns. On such an occasion disobedience and blunder are 
crimes equally heinous.” 

Angry murmurs. 

“ Silence ! Do not add mutiny to your other offenses. My 
instructions were simple and short. Aid in the abolition of 
the Empire. Do not aid in any senseless cry for a Kepublic 
or any other form of government. Leave that to the Legisla- 


THE PARISIANS. 


353 


ture. What have you done ? You swelled the crowd that 
invaded the Corps Legislatif. You, Loubisky, not even a 
Frenchman, dare to mount the President’s rostrum and 
brawl forth your senseless jargon. You, Edgar Ferrier, 
from whom I expected better, ascend the tribune, and invite 
the ruffians in the crowd to march to the prisons and release 
the convicts ; and all of you swell the mob at the Hotel de 
Ville, and inaugurate the reign of folly by creating an oli- 
garchy of lawyers to resist the march of triumphal armies. 
Messieurs, I have done with you. You are summoned for 
the last time : the Council is dissolved.” 

With these words Lebeau put on his hat, and turned to 
depart. But the Pole, who was seated near him, sprang to 
his feet, exclaiming, “ Traitor, thou shalt not escape ! Com- 
rades, he wants to sell us !” 

“ I have a right to sell you^ at least, for I bought you, and 
a very bad bargain I made,” said Lebeau, in a tone of wither- 
ing sarcasm. 

® \ 

“Liar!” cried the Pole, and seized Lebeau by the left 

hand, while with the right he drew forth a revolver. Ferrier 
and Grimm, shouting “ A has Je renigat V would have rushed 
forward in support of the Pole, but Monnier thrust himself 
between them and their intended victim, crying with a voice 
that dominated their yell, “ Back ! — we are not assassins.” 
Before he had finished the sentence, the Pole was on his 
knees. AVith a vigor which no one could have expected from 
the seeming sexagenarian, Lebeau had caught the right arm 
of his assailant, and twisted it back so mercilessly as almost to 

dislocate elbow and shoulder-joint. One barrel of the re- 
VoL. II. 23 


354 


THE PARISIANS. 


volver discharged itself harmlessly against the opposite wall, 
and the pistol itself then fell from the unnerved hand of the 
would-be assassin ; and, what with the pain and the sudden 
shock, the stalwart Loubisky fell in the attitude of a sup- 
pliant at the feet of his unlooked-for vanquisher. 

Lebeau released his hold, possessed himself of the pistol, 
pointing the barrels towards Edgar Ferrier, who stood with 
mouth agape and lifted arm arrested, and said quietly, 
“ Monsieur, have the goodness to open that window.” Ferrier 
mechanically obeyed. “ Now, hireling,” continued Lebeau, 
addressing the vanquished Pole, “ choose between the door 
and the window.” “ Gro, my friend,” whispered the Italian. 
The Pole did not utter a word, but, rising nimbly, and rubbing 
his arm, stalked to the door. There he paused a moment and 
said, “ I retire overpowered by numbers,” and vanished. 

“ Messieurs,” resumed Lebeau, calmly, “ I repeat that the 
Council is dissolved. In fact, its object is fulfilled more 
abruptly than any of us foresaw, and by means which I at 
least had been too long out of Paris to divine as possible. I 
now see that every aberration of reason is possible to the 
Parisians. The object that united us was the fall of the 
Empire. As I have always frankly told you, with that object 
achieved, separation commences. Each of us has his own 
crotchet, which differs from the other man’s. Pursue yours 
as you will — I pursue mine — you will find Jean Lebeau no 
more in Paris : il efface. Au plaisir^ mais pas au revoir'^ 

He retreated to the masked door and disappeared. 

Marc le Roux, the porter or custos of that ruinous council- 
hall, alarmed at the explosion of the pistol, had hurried into 


THE PARISIANS. 


355 


the room, and now stood unheeded by the door with mouth 
agape, while Lebeau thus curtly dissolved the assembly. But 
when the President vanished through the secret doorway, 
Le Boux also retreated. Hastily descending the stairs, he 
made as quickly as his legs could carry him for the mouth of 
the alley in the rear of the house, through which he knew 
that Lebeau must pass. He arrived, panting and breathless, 
in time to catch hold of the ex-president’s arm. “ Pardon, 
citizen,” stammered he, “ but do I understand that you have 
sent the Council of Ten to the devil ?” 

“ I ? Certainly not, my good Marc ; I dismiss them to go 
where they like. If they prefer the direction you name, it is 
their own choice. I decline to accompany them ; and I advise 
you not to do so.” 

“ But, citizen, have you considered what is to become of 
Madame ? Is she to be turned out of the lodge ? Are my 
wages to stop, and Madame to be left without a crust to put 
into her soup ?” 

“ Not so bad as that ; I have just paid the rent of the 
haraque for three months in advance, and there is your quar- 
ter’s pay, in advance also. My kind regards to Madame, and 
tell her to keep your skin safe from the schemes of these luna- 
tics.” Thrusting some pieces of gold into the hands of the 
porter, Lebeau nodded his adieu, and hastened along his way. 

Absorbed in his own reflections, he did not turn to look 
behind. But if he had, he could not have detected the dark 
form of the porter, creeping in the deep shadow of the 
streets with distant but watchful footsteps. 


356 


THE PARISIANS. 


'i 

CHAPTER IX. 

The conspirators, when left by their president, dispersed 
in deep, not noisy resentment. They were indeed too stunned 
for loud demonstration ; and belonging to different grades of 
life, and entertaining different opinions, their confidence in 
each other seemed lost now that the chief who had brought 
and kept them together was withdrawn from their union. 
The Italian and the Atheist slank away, whispering to each 
other. Grrimm reproached Perrier for deserting Loubisky 
and obeying Lebeau. Perrier accused Grrimm of his German 
origin, and hinted at denouncing him as a Prussian spy. 
Gaspard le Noy linked his arm in Monnier’s, and when they 
had gained the dark street without, leading into a labyrinth 
of desolate lanes, the Medecin des Pauvres said to the mechanic, 
“ You are a brave fellow, Monnier. Lebeau owes you a good 
turn. But for your cry, ‘ We are not assassins,’ the Pole 
might not have been left without support. No atmosphere is 
so infectious as that in which we breathe the same air of 
revenge : when the violence of one man puts into action the 
anger or suspicion of others, ' they become like a pack of 
hounds, which follow the spring of the first hound, whether 
on the wild boar or their own master. Even I, who am by 
no means hot-headed, had my hand on my case-knife when 
the word ‘ assassins’ rebuked and disarmed me.” 

“Nevertheless,” said Monnier, gloomily, “I half repent 


THE PARISIANS. 


357 


tlic impulse which made me interfere to save that man. 
Better he should die than live to betray the cause we allowed 
him to lead.” 

“Nay, mon ami^ speaking candidly, we must confess that he 
never from the first pretended to advocate the cause for which 
you conspired. On the contrary, he always said that with the 
fall of the Empire our union would cease, and each become 
free to choose his own way towards his own after-objects.” 

“ Yes,” answered Armand, reluctantly ; “ he said that to 
me privately, with still greater plainness than he said it to the 
Council. But I answered as plainly.” 

“How?” 

“ I told him that the man who takes the first step in a 
revolution, and persuades others to go along with him, cannot 
in safety stand still or retreat when the next step is to be taken. 
It is ‘ en avant' ov ^ d, la lanteme' So it shall be with him. 
Shall a fellow-being avail himself of the power over my mind 
which he derives from superior education or experience, — 
break into wild fragments my life, heretofore tranquil, orderly, 
happy, — make use of ' my opinions, which were then hut 
harmless desires, to serve his own purpose, which was hostile 
to the opinions he roused irito action, — say to me, ‘Give 
yourself up to destroy the first obstacle in the way of securing 
a form of society which youi: inclinations prefer,’ and then, 
that first obstacle destroyed, cry, ‘ Halt ! I go with you 
no further; I will not help you to piece together the life 
I have induced you to shatter ; I will not aid you to substi- 
tute for the society that pained you the society that would 
please; I leave you, struggling, bewildered, maddened, in the 


358 


THE PARISIANS. 


midst of chaos within and without you’ ? Shall a fellow- 
being do this, and vanish with a mocking cry, ‘ Tool ! I 
have had enough of thee ; I cast thee aside as worthless 
lumber’ ? Ah ! let him beware ! The tool is of iron, and 
can be shaped to edge and point.” 

The passion with which this rough eloquence was uttered, 
and the fierce sinister expression that had come over a counte- 
nance habitually open and manly, even when grave and stern, 
alarmed and startled Le Noy. “ Pooh, my friend !” he said, 
rather falteringly, “you are too excited now to think justly. 
Go home and kiss your children. Never do anything that 
may make them shrink from their father. And as to Lebeau, 
try and forget him. He says he shall disappear from Paris. 
I believe him. It is clear to me that the man is not what he 
seemed to us. No man of sixty could by so easy a sleight 
of hand have brought that giant Pole to his knee. If Lebeau 
reappear, it will be in some other form. Did you notice that 
in the momentary struggle his fiaxen wig got disturbed ? and 
beneath it I saw a dark curl. I suspect that the man is not 
only younger than he seemed, but of higher rank, — a con- 
spirator against one throne, perhaps, in order to be minister 
under another. There are such men.” 

Before Monnier, who seemed struck by these conjectures, 
collected his thoughts to answer, a tall man in the dress of a 
soxis-lieutenant stopped under a dim gas-lamp, and, catching 
sight of the artisan’s face, seized him by the hand, exclaiming, 
“ Armand, mon frlre ! well met ; strange times, eh ? Come 
and discuss them at the Ca/S de Lyon yonder, over a bowl of 
punch. I’ll stand treat.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


359 


Agreed, dear Charles.” 

“ And if this monsieur is a friend of yours perhaps lie will 
join us.” 

“ You are too obliging, Monsieur,” answered Le Noy, not 
ill pleased to get rid of his excited companion ; “ but it has 
been a busy day with me, and I am only fit for bed. Be 
abstinent of the punch, Armand. You are feverish already. 
Good-night, Messieurs.” 

The Cafe de Lyon^ in vogue among the National Guard 
of the quartier^ was but a few yards off, and the brothers 
turned towards it arm in arm. “ Who is the friend ?” asked 
Charles ; “ I don’t remember to have seen him with thee 
before.” 

“ He belongs to the medical craft — a good patriot and a 
kind man — attends the poor gratuitously. Yes, Charles, 
these are strange times ; what dost thou think will come of 
them?” 

They had now entered the cafe ; and Charles had ordered 
the punch, and seated himself at a vacant table before he re- 
plied. “ What will come of these times ? I will tell thee. 
National deliverance and regeneration through the ascendency 
of the National Guard.” 

“ Eh ? I don’t take,” said Armand, bewildered. 

“Probably not,” answered Charles, with an air of com- 
passionate conceit; “thou art a dreamer, but I am a poli- 
tician.” He tapped his forehead significantly. “At this 
custom-house ideas are examined before they are passed.” 

Armand gazed at his brother wistfully, and with a deference 
he rarely manifested towards any one who disputed his own 


360 


THE PARISIANS. 


claims to superior intelligence. Charles was a few years older 
than Monnier ; he was of larger build ; he had shaggy lower- 
ing eyebrows, a long obstinate upper lip, the face of a man 
who was accustomed to lay down the law. Inordinate self- 
esteem often gives that character to a physiognomy otherwise 
commonplace. Charles passed for a deep thinker in his own 
set, which was a very different set from Arman d’s^ — not among 
workmen, but small shop-keepers. He had risen in life to a 
grade beyond Armand’s ; he had always looked to the main 
chance ; married the widow of a hosier and glover much older 
than himself, and in her right was a very respectable trades- 
man, comfortably well off ; a Liberal, of course, but a Liberal 
hourgeois, equally against those above him and those below. 
Needless to add that he had no sympathy with his brother’s 
socialistic opinions. Still, he loved that brother as well as he 
could love any one except himself. And Armand, who was 
very affectionate, and with whom family ties were very strong, 
returned that love with ample interest ; and though so fiercely 
at war with the class to which Charles belonged, was secretly 
proud of having a brother who was of that class. So in Eng- 
land I have known the most violent antagonist of the landed 
aristocracy — himself a cobbler — who interrupts a discourse on 
the crimes of the aristocracy by saying, “ Though I myself 
descend from a county family.” 

In an evil day Charles Monnier, enrolled in the National 
Guard, had received promotion in that patriotic corps. From 
that date he began to neglect his shop, to criticise military 
matters, and to think that if merit had fair play he should be 
a Cincinnatus or a Washington, he had not decided which. 


THE PARISIANS. 


361 


“ Yes,” resumed Charles, ladling out the punch, “ thou 
hast wit enough to perceive that our generals are imbeciles or 
traitors; that gredin Bonaparte has sold the army for ten 
millions of francs to Bismarck, and I have no doubt that 
Wimpffen has hi^ sliare of the bargain. McMahon was 
wounded conveniently, and has his own terms for it. The 
regular army is nowhere. Thou wilt see — thou wilt see — 
they will not stop the march of the Prussians. Trochu will 
be obliged to come to the National Guard. Then we shall 
say, ‘ General, give us our terms, and go to sleep.’ I shall be 
summoned to the council of war. I have my plan. I explain 
it — ’tis accepted — it succeeds. I am placed in supreme com-, 
mand — the Prussians are chased back to their sour-krout. 
And I — well, I don’t like to boast, but thou’lt see — thou’lt 
see— what will happen.” 

“ And thy plan, Charles— thou hast formed it already?” 

“ Ay, ay,-T-the really military genius is prompt, mmx 2 >etit 
Armand — a flash of the brain. Hark ye! Let the Vandals 
come to Paris and invest it. Whatever their numbers on 
paper, I don’t care a button ; they can only have a few thou- 
sands at any given point in the vast circumference of the 
capital. Any fool must grant that— thou must grant it, eh?’* 

“ It seems just.” 

“ Of course. Well, then, we proceed by sorties of two hun- 
dred thousand men repeated every other day, and in twelve 
days the Prussians are in full flight.* The country rises on 

* Charles Monnier seems to have indiscreetly blabbed out his idea,” 
for it was plagiarized afterwards at a meeting of the National Guards in 
the Salle de la Bourse by Citizen Rocbebrune (slain 19tb January, 1871, 
VOL. II.— 0 


362 


THE PARISIAN^. 


their flight — they are cut to pieces. I depose Trochu — the 
National Guard elects the Savior of France. I have a place in 
my eye for thee. Thou art superb as a decorator — thou shalt 
be Minister cZes Beaux Arts. ■ But keep clear of the canaille. 
No more strikes then — thou wilt be an employer — respect thy 
future order.” 

Armand smiled mournfully. Though of intellect which, 
had it been disciplined, was far superior to his brother’s, it 
was so estranged from practical opinions, so warped, so heated, 
so flawed and cracked in parts, that he did not see the ridicule 
of Charles’s braggadocio. Charles had succeeded in life> 
Armand had failed; and Armand believed in the worldly 
wisdom of the elder-born. But he was far too sincere for 
any bribe to tempt him to forsake his creed and betray his 
opinions. And he knew that it must be a very different 
revolution from that which his brother contemplated, that 
could allow him to marry another man’s wife, and his “ order” 
to confiscate other people’s property. 

“ Don’t talk of strikes, Charles. What is done is done. I 
was led into heading a strike, not on my own account, for I 
was well paid and well off, but for the sake of my fellow- 
workmen. I may regret now what I did, for the sake of 
Marie and the little ones. But it is an affair of honor, and I 
cannot withdraw from the cause till my order, as thou namest 
my class, has its rights.” 

in the affair of Montretout). The plan, which he developed nearly in 
the same words as Charles Monnier, was received with lively applause; 
and at the close of his speech it was proposed to name at once Citizen 
Rochebrune General of the National Guard — an honor which, unhap])il7 
for his country, the citizen had the modesty to decline. 


THE PARISIANS. 


363 


“ Bah ! thou wilt think better of it when thou art an 
employer. Thou hast suffered enough already. Bemember 
that I warned thee against that old fellow in spectacles whom 
I met. once at thy house. I told thee he would lead thee 
into mischief and then leave thee to get out of it. I saw 
through him. I have a head. Va 

“ Thou wert a true prophet — ^he has duped me. But in 
moving me he has set others in movement ; and I suspect he 
will find he has duped himself. Time will show.” 

Here the brothers were joined by some loungers belonging 
to the National Guard. The talk became general, the pota* 
tions large. Towards daybreak Armand reeled home, drunk 
for the first time in his life. He was one of those whom 
drink makes violent. Marie had been sitting up for him, 
alaimed at his lengthened absence. But when she would 
have thrown herself on his breast, her pale face and her 
passionate sobs enraged him. He flung her aside roughly. 
From that night the man’s nature was changed. If, as a 
physiognomist has said, each man has in him a portion of 
the wild beast, which is suppressed by mild civilizing circum- 
stances, and comes uppermost when self-control is lost, the 
nature of many an honest workman, humane and tender- 
hearted as the best of us, commenced a change into the wild 
beast, that raged through the civil war of the Communists, on 
the day when half a dozen Incapables, with no more claim to 
represent the people of Paris than half a dozen monkeys 
would have, were allowed to elect themselves to supreme 
power, and in the very fact of that election released all the 
elements of passion and destroyed all the bulwarks of order. 


364 


THE PARISIANS. 


CHAPTER X. 

No man perhaps had more earnestly sought and more pas- 
sionately striven for the fall of the Empire than Victor de 
Maul^on ; and perhaps no man was more dissatisfied with and 
disappointed by the immediate consequences of that fall. In 
first conspiring against the Empire, he had naturally enough, 
in common with all the more intelligent enemies of the 
dynasty, presumed that its fate would he worked out by the 
normal effect of civil causes — the alienation of the educated 
classes, the discontent of the artisans, the eloquence of the 
press and of popular meetings, strengthened in proportion as 
the Emperor had been compelled to relax the former checks 
upon the license of either. And De Mauleon had no less 
naturally concluded that there would he time given for the 
preparation of a legitimate and rational form of government 
to succeed that which was destroyed. For, as has been 
hinted or implied, this remarkable man was not merely an 
instigator of revolution through the Secret Council and the 
turbulent agencies set in movement through the lower strata 
of society ; he was also in confidential communication with 
men eminent for wealth, station, and political repute, from 
whom he obtained the funds necessary for the darker pur- 
poses of conspiracy, into the elaboration of which they did 
not inquire ; and these men, though belonging like himself to 
the Liberal party, were no hot-blooded democrats. Most of 


THE PARISIANS. 


365 


them were in favor of constitutional monarchy ; all of them 
for forms of government very different from any republic in 
which socialists or communists could find themselves upper- 
most. Among these politicians were persons ambitious and 
able, who in scheming for the fall of the Empire had been 
prepared to undertake the task of conducting to ends com- 
patible with modern civilkatioU the revolution they were 
willing to allow a mob at Paris to commence. The opening 
of the war necessarily suspended their designs. How com- 
pletely the events of the 4th September mocked the. calcula- 
tions of their ablest minds and paralyzed the action of their 
most energetic spirits, will appear in the conversation I am 
about ta record. It takes place between Victor de Mauleon 
and the personage to whom he had addressed the letter written 
on the night before the interview with Louvier, in which 
Victor had announced his intention of reappearing in Paris 
in his proper name and rank. I shall designate this corre- 
spondent as vaguely as possible ; let me call him The Incog- 
nito. He may yet play so considerable a part in the history 
of France as a potent representative of the political philosophy 
of De Tocqueville — that is, of Liberal principles incompatible 
with the absolute power either of a sovereign or a populace, 
and resolutely opposed to experiments on the foundations of 
civilized society — that it would be unfair to himself and his 
partisans if, in a work like this, a word were said that could 
lead malignant conjecture to his identity with any special 
chief of the opinions of which I here present him only as a 
type. 

The Incognito, entering Victor’s apartment i — 


366 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ My dear friend, even if I had not received your telegram, 
I should have hastened hither on the news of this astounding 
revolution. It is only in Paris that such a tragedy could be 
followed by such a farce. You were on the spot — a spectator. 
Explain it, if you can.” 

De Mauli^on. — “ I was more than a spectator ; I was an 
actor. Hiss me — I deserve it. When the terrible news from 
Sedan reached Paris, in the midst of the general stun and be- 
wilderment I noticed a hesitating timidity among all those 
who had wares in their shops and a good coat on their backs* 
They feared that to proclaim the Empire defunct would be to 
install the Red Republic, with all its paroxysm of impulsive 
rage and all its theories of wholesale confiscation. But since 
it was impossible for the object we had in view to let slip the 
occasion of deposing the dynasty which stood in its way, it 
was necessary to lose no time in using the revolutionary part 
of the populace for that purpose. I assisted in doing so ; my 
excuse is this — that in a time of crisis a man of action must 
go straight to his immediate object, and in so doing em- 
ploy the instruments at his command. I made, however, 
one error in judgment which admits of no excuse. I relied 
on all I had heard, and all I had observed, of the character 
of Trochu, and I was deceived, in common, I believe, with 
all his admirers, and three parts of the educated classes of 
Paris.” 

Incognito. — “ I should have been equally deceived ! 
Trochu’s conduct is a riddle that I doubt if he himself can 
ever solve. He was master of the position ; he had the mili- 
tary force in his hands if he combined with Palikao, which, 


THE PARISIANS. 


367 


whatever the jealousies between the two, it was his absolute 

duty to do. He had a great prestige ” 

De Maul^on. — “ And for the moment a still greater popu- 
larity. His ipse dixit could have determined the wavering 
and confused spirits of the population. I was prepared for 
his abandonment of the Emperor — even of the Empress and 
the Regency. But how could I imagine that he, the man 
of moderate politics, of Orleanistic leanings, the clever writer, 
the fine talker, the chivalrous soldier, the religious Breton, 
could abandon everything that was legal, everything that 
could save France against the enemy, and Paris against civil 
discord! that he would connive at the annihilation of the 
Senate, of the popular Assembly, of every form of govern- 
ment that could be recognized as legitimate at home or abroad, 
accept service under men whose doctrines were opposed to all 
his antecedents, all his professed opinions, and inaugurate a 
chaos under the name of a Republic 1” 

Incognito. — “ How, indeed ! How suppose that the 
National Assembly, just elected by a majority of seven mil- 
lions and a half, could be hurried into a conjuring-box, and 
reappear as the travesty of a Venetian oligarchy, composed 
of half a dozen of its most unpopular members 1 The sole 
excuse for Trochu is, that he deemed all other considerations 
insignificant compared with the defense of Paris and the 
united action of the nation against the invaders. But, if that 
were his honest desire, in siding with this monstrous usurpa- 
tion of j)Ower he did everything by which the desire could 
be frustrated. Had there been any provisional body, com- 
posed of men known and esteemed, elected by the Chambers, 


368 


THE PARISIANS. 


supported by Trocbu and the troops at his back, there would 
have been a rallying-point for the patriotism of the provinces ; 
and in the wise suspense of any constitution to succeed that 
government until the enemy were chased from the field, all 
partisans — Imperialists, Legitimists, Orleanists, Eepublicans— 
would have equally adjourned their difierences. But a demo-* 
cratic Bepublic, proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in 
which sincere democratic Eepublicans are a handful, in con- 
tempt of an Assembly chosen by the country at large ; headed 
by men in whom the provinces have no trust, and for whom 
their own representatives are violently cashiered ; — can you 
conceive such a combination of wet blankets supplied by the 
irony of fate for the extinction of every spark of ardor in the 
population from which armies are to be gathered in haste, at 
the beck of usurpers they distrust and despise ? • Paris has 
excelled itself in folly. Hungering for peace, it proclaims a 
government which has no legal power to treat for it. Shriek- 
ing out for allies among the monarchies, it annihilates the 
hope of obt-aining them ; its sole chance of escape from siege, 
famine, and bombardment is in the immediate and impas* 
sioned sympathy of the provinces; and it revives all the 
grudges which the provinces have long sullenly felt against 
the domineering pretensions of the capital, and invokes the 
rural populations, which comprise the pith and sinew of 
armies, in the name of men whom I verily believe they detest 
still more than they do the Prussians. Victor, it is enough 
to make one despair of his country 1 All beyond the hour 
seems anarchy and ruin.” 

“ Not so !” exclaimed Be Maul4on. “ Everything comes 


THE PARISIANS. 


369 


to him who knows how to wait. The Empire is destroyed* 
the usurpation that follows it has no roots. It will but serve 
to expedite the establishment of such a constitution as we have 
meditated and planiied — a constitution adapted to our age 
and our; people, not based wholly on untried experiments, 
taking the best from nations that do not allow Freedom and 
Order to be the sport of every popular breeze. From the 
American Republic we must borrow the only safeguards 
against the fickleness of the universal suffrage which, though 
it was madness to concede in any ancient community, once con- 
ceded cannot be safely abolished,^ — viz., first, the salutary law 
that no article of the Constitution once settled can be altered 
without the consent of two-thirds of the legislative body. By 
this law we insure permanence, and that concomitant love for 
institutions which is engendered by time and custom. Secondly,' 
the formation of a Senate on such principles as may secure to 
it in all times of danger a confidence and respect which coun- 
teract in public opinion the rashness and heat of the popular 
Assembly. On what principles that Senate should be jformed, 
with what functions invested, what share of the executive — • 
especially in foreign affairs, declarations of war, or treaties 
of peace — should be accorded to it, will no doubt need the 
most deliberate care of the ablest minds. But a Senate I 
thus sketch has alone rescued America from the rashness 
of counsel incident to a democratic Chamber; and it is still 
more essential to France, with still more favorable elements 
for its creation. From England we must borrow the great 
principle that has alone saved her from revolution— ^that the 

head of the State can do no wrong. He leads no armies, he 
Q* 24 


370 


THE PARISIANS. 


presides over no Cabinet. All responsibility rests with bis 
advisers ; and where we upset a dynasty, England changes an 
administration. Whether the head of the State should have 
the title of sovereign or president, whether he be hereditary 
or elected, are questions of minor importance, impossible now 
to determine ; but in which I heartily concur with you that 
hereditary monarchy is infinitely better adapted to the habits 
of Frenchmen, to their love of show and of honors — and in- 
finitely more preservative from all the dangers which result 
from constant elections to such a dignity, with parties so 
heated, and pretenders to the rank so numerous — than any 
principle by which a popular demagogue or a successful gen- 
eral is.enabled to destroy the institutions he is elected to guard. 
On these fundamental doctrines for the regeneration of France 
I think we are agreed. And I believe, when the moment 
arrives to promulgate them, through an expounder of weight 
like yourself, they will rapidly commend themselves to the in- 
tellect of France. For they belong to common sense ; and in 
the ultimate prevalence of common sense I have a faith which 
I refuse to medievalists who would restore the right divine; 
and still more to fanatical quacks, who imagine that the 
worship of the Deity, the ties of family, and the rights of 
property are errors at variance with the progress of society. 
Qui vivera, verra'' 

Incognito. — “ In the outlines of the policy you so ably 
enunciate I heartily concur. But if France is, I will not say 
to be regenerated, but to have fair play among the nations of 
Europe, I add one or two items to the programme. France 
must be saved from Paris, not by subterranean barracks and 


THE PARISIANS. 


371 


trains, the impotence of which we see to-day with a general 
in command of the military force, but by conceding to France 
its proportionate share of the power now monopolized by 
Paris. All this system of centralization, equally tyrannical 
and corrupt, must be eradicated. Talk of examples from 
America, of which I know little — from England, of which I 
know much, — what can we more advantageously borrow from 
England than that diffusion of all her moral and social power 
which forbids the congestion of blood in one vital part ? De- 
centralize ! decentralize ! decentralize ! will be my incessant 
cry, if ever the time comes when my cry will be heard. 
France can never be a genuine France until Paris has no 
more influence over the destinies of France than London has 
over those of England. But on this theme I could go on till 
midnight. Now to the immediate point : what do you advise 
me to do in this crisis, and what do you propose to do your- 
self?” 

De Maul4on put his hand to his brow, and remained a few 
moments silent and thoughtful. At last he looked up with 
that decided expression of face which was not the least among 
his many attributes for influence over those with whom he 
came into contact. 

“ For you, on whom so much of the future depends, my 
advice is brief — ^have nothing to do with the present. All 
who join this present mockery of a government will share 
the fall that attends it — a fall from which one or two of their 
boBy may possibly recover by casting blame on their confreres ; 
you never could. But it is not for you to oppose that gov- 
ernment with an enemy on its march to Paris. You are not 


372 


THE PARISIANS. 


a soldier; military command is riot in your role. The issue 
of events is uncertain; but, whatever it be, the men in power 
cannot conduct a prosperous war nor, obtain an honorable .peace. 
Hereafter you may be the Deus ex niachind. No personage 
of that rank and with that mission appears till the end of the 
play: we are only in the first act. Leaye Paris at once, and 
abstain from all action.” 

Incognito (dejectedly). — “ I cannot, deny the soundness 
of yoUr advice, though in accepting it I feel unutterably sad- 
dened. Still, you, the calmest and shrewdest observer among 
my friends, think there is cause for hope, not despair. Victor, 
I have more than most men to make life pleasant, but I would 
lay down life at this moment with you. You know me well 
enough to be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction when 
I say that I love my country as a young man loves the ideal 
of his dreams — with my whole mind and heart and soril I and 
the thought that I cannot now aid her in the hour of her 
mortal trial is^is' — — ” . 

The man’s voice brrike dowri, arid he turned aside, veiling 
his face with a hand that trembled. 

Be MAtJLfioN.— •“ Courage Impatience ! All Frenchmeri 
have the first ; set them an example they much need in the 
second. I, too, loVe my country, though I owe to it little 
enough, Heaveri knows. ' I suppose love of country is in- 
herent in all who are not Internationalists. They profess only 
to love humanity, by which, if they mean anything ptactical, 
they mean a rise in wages.” 

Incognito (rousing himself, and with a half-smile).-^ 
‘‘ Always cynical, Victor- — ^always belying yourself. But now 


THE PARISIANS. 


873 


that you have advised my eour^, what -will be your own ? 
Accompany me, and wait for better times.” ' i,..| n : 

“No, lioble friend; our positions are different. «;-Yours is 
made — mine yet tp m^he. But for this, war I think I could 
have secured a seat in the Chamber. As; I wrote you, I 
found that my kinsfolk were of ipuch influence > in ritheir de^ 
partment, and that ^my. restitution to my social grade; and the 
repute I had made as an Orleanist, inclined them to forget 
my youthful errors and to assist my career. But the Chamber 
ceases to exist. My journal I shall drop. I cannot support 
the government; it is not a moment to oppose it. My 
prudent course is silence.” 

Incognito. — “ But is not your journal essential to your 
support ?” 

Be Maul^ON. — “ Fortunately not. Its profits enabled me 
to lay by for the rainy day that ba§ pope ; ,apd,. h’‘^ving reim- 
bursed you and all friends the sums necessary to start it, I 
stand clear of all debt, and, for my slender wants, a rich man. 
If I continued the journal I should be beggared ; for there 
would be no readers to ‘ Common Sense’ in this interval of 
lunacy. Nevertheless, during this interval I trust to other 
ways for winning a name that will open my rightful path of 
ambition whenever we again have a legislature in which 
‘ Common Sense’ can be heard.” 

Incognito. — “ But how win that name, silenced as a 
writer?” 

Be Mauli^on. — “You forget that I have fought in 
Algeria. In a few days Paris will be in a state of siege ; and 


374 


THE PARIISIANS. 


then — ^and then,” he added, and very quietly dilated on the 
renown of a patriot or the grave of a soldier. 

“ I envy you the chance of either,’^ said the Incognito ; 
and, after a few more brief words, he departed, his hat drawn 
over his brows, and, entering a hired carriage which he had 
left at the comer of the quiet street, was consigned to the 
Station du , just in time for the next train. 


END OP THE SECOND VOLUME. 


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THE PARISIANS, 


BOOK XIX. 
CONTINUED. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Victor dressed and went out. The streets were crowded. 
Workmen were everywhere employed in the childish opera- 
tion of removing all insignia and obliterating all names that 
showed where an empire had existed. One greasy citizen^ 
mounted on a ladder, was effacing the words “ Boulevard 
Haussmann” and substituting for Haussmann “Victor Hugo.” 

Suddenly He Mauleon came on a group of blouses, inter- 
spersed with women holding babies and ragged boys holding 
stones, collected round a well-dressed slender man, at whom 
they were hooting and gesticulating with menaces of doing 
something much worse. By an easy effort of his strong 
frame the Vicomte pushed his way through the tormentors, 
and gave bis arm to their intended victim. 

“ Monsieur, allow me to walk home with you.” 

Therewith the shrieks and shouts and gesticulations in- 
creased. “ Another impertinent ! Another traitor ! Drown 

5 


6 


THE PARISIANS. 


him ! Drown them both ! To the Seine ! To the Seine !” A 
burly fellow rushed forward, and the rest made a plunging 
push. The outstretched arm of De Mauleon kept the ringleader 
at bay. “ Mes enfansj'' cried Victor, with a calm clear voice, 
“ I am not an Imperialist. Many of you have Tead the articles 
signed Pierre Firmin, written against the tyrant Bonaparte 
when he was at the height of his power. I am Pierre Firmin 
— make way for me.” Probably not one in the crowd had 
ever read a word writteia by Pierre Firmin, or even heard 
of the name. But they did not like to own ignorance ; and 
that burly fellow did not like to encounter that arm of iron 
which touched his tlrroat. So he cried out, “ Oh ! if you 
are the great Pierre Fiimin, that alters the case. Make way 
for the patriot Pierre !” “ But,” shrieked a virago, thrusting 

her baby into De Mauleon’s face, “ the other is the Imperialist, 
the capitalist, the vile Duplessis. At least we will have him. ‘ 
De Mauleon suddenly snatched the baby from her, and said, 
with imperturbable good temper, “ Exchange of prisoners ! I 
resign the man, and I keep the baby.” 

No one who does not know the humors of a Parisian mob 
can comprehend the suddenness of popular change, or the 
magical mastery over crowds which is effected by quiet courage 
and a ready joke. The group was appeased at once. Even 
the virago laughed; and when De Mauleon restored the 
infant to her arms, with a gold piece thrust into its tiny 
clasp, she eyed the gold, and cried, “ God bless you, citizen !” 
The two gentlemen made their way safely now. 

“ M. de Mauleon,” said Duplessis, “ I know not how to 
thank you. Without your seasonable aid I should have been 


THE PARISIANS. 


7 


in great danger of my life ; and — would you believe it ? — the 
woman who denounced and set the mob on me was one of 
the objects of a charity which I weekly dispense to the poor.” 

“ Of course I believe that. At the Red clubs no crime is 
more denounced than that of charity. It is the ‘ fraud 
against Egalite ' — a vile trick of the capitalist to save to him- 
self the millions he ought to share with all by giving a sou to 
one. Meanwhile, take my advice, M. Duplessis, and quit 
Paris with your young daughter. This is no place for rich 
Imperialists at present.” 

“ I perceived that before to-day’s adventure. I distrust 
the looks of my very servants, and shall depart with Valerie 
this evening for Bretagne.” 

“ Ah ! I heard from Louvier that you propose to pay off 
his mortgage on Rochebriant and make yourself sole pro- 
prietor of my young kinsman’s property.” 

“ I trust you only believe half what you hear. I mean to 
save Rochebriant from Louvier, and consign it, free of charge, 
to your kinsman, as the dot of his bride, my daughter.” 

“I rejoice to learn such good news for the head of my 
house. But Alain himself — is he not with the prisoners of 
war ?” 

“ No, thank Heaven. He went forth an officer of a regi- 
ment of Parisian Mobiles — went full of sanguine confidence ; 
he came back with his regiment in mournful despondency. 
The undiscipline of his regiment, of the Parisian Mobiles 
generally, appears incredible. Their insolent disobedience to 
their officers, their ribald scoffs at their general — oh, it is 
sickening to speak of it. Alain distinguished himself by 


8 


THE PARISIANS. 


repressing a mutiny, and is honored by a signal compliment 
from the commander in a letter of recommendation to Palikao. 
But Palikao is nobody now. Alain has already been sent 
into Bretagne, commissioned to assist in organizing a corps 
of Mobiles in his neighborhood. Trochu, as you know, is a 
Breton. Alain is confident of the good conduct of the 
Bretons. What will Louvier do ? He is an arch B.epub- 
lican : is he pleased now he has got what he wanted ?’ ’ 

“ I suppose he is pleased, for he is terribly frightened. 
Fright is one of the great enjoyments of a Parisian. Good- 
day. Your path to your hotel is clear now. B,emember me 
kindly to Alain.” 

Be Mauleon continued his way through streets sometimes 
deserted, sometimes thronged. At the commencement of the 
Bue de Florentin he encountered the brothers Vandemar 
walking arm in arm. 

“ Ha, Be Mauleon !” cried Enguerrand ; “ what is the last 
minute’s news ?” 

“ I can’t guess. Nobody knows at Paris how soon one 
folly swallows up another. Saturn here is always devouring 
one or other of his children.” 

“ They say that Vinoy, after a most masterly retreat, is 
almost at our gates with eighty thousand men.” 

“ And this day twelvemonth we may know what he does 
with them.” 

Here Baoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy reflections, 
halted before the hotel in which the Comtesse di Bimini 
lodged, and with a nod to his brother, and a polite, if not 
cordial, salutation to Victor, entered the porte-cochlre. 


THE PARISIANS. 


9 


“ Your brother seems out of spirits, — a pleasing contrast to 
the uproarious mirth with which Parisians welcome the advance 
of calamity.” 

“ Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. He regards the 
defeat we have sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as 
the beginning of a divine chastisement, justly incurred by our 
sins — I mean, the sins of Paris. In vain my father reminds 
him of Voltaire’s story, in which the ship goes down with a 
fripon on board. In order to punish the fripon^ the honest 
folks are drowned.” 

“ Is your father going to remain on board the ship and 
share the fate of the other honest folks ?” 

Pas si htte. He is oif to Dieppe for sea-bathing. He 
says that Paris has grown so dirty since the 4th September 
that it is only fit for the feet of the Unwashed. He wished 
my mother to accompany him ; but she replies, ‘ No ; there 
are already too many wounded not to need plenty of nurses. 
She is assisting to inaugurate a society of ladies in aid of the 
Sceurs de Charite. Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has 
not his superstitions. Still, his superstitions are the natural 
reaction of a singularly earnest and pure nature from the 
frivolity and corruption which, when kneaded well up together 
with a slice of sarcasm, Paris calls philosophy.” 

“And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you propose to do?” 

“ That depends on whether we are really besieged. If so, 
of course I become a soldier.” 

“ I hope not a National Guard ?” 

“ I care not in what name I- fight, so that I fight for 
France.” 

A* 


10 


THE PARISIANS. 


As Enguerrand said these simple words, his whole counte- 
Rance seemed changed. The crest rose ; the eyes sparkled ; 
the' fair and delicate beauty which made him the darling 
of women — the joyous sweetness of expression and dainty 
grace of high breeding which made him the most popular 
companion to men, — were exalted in a masculine nobleness 
of aspect, from which a painter might have taken hints for a 
studj of the young Achilles separated forever from effeminate 
companionship at the sight of the weapons of war. Be 
Mauleon gazed on him admiringly. We have seen that he 
shared the sentiments uttered — had resolved on the same 
course of action. But it was with the tempered warmth of a 
man who seeks to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the 
ardor of romance, and who in serving his country calculates 
on the gains to his own ambition. Nevertheless he admired in 
Enguerrand the image of his own impulsive and fiery youth. 

“ And you, I presume,” resumed Enguerrand, “ will fight 
too, but rather with pen than with sword.” 

“ Pens will now be dipped only in red ink, and common 
sense never writes in that color; as for the sword, I have 
passed the age of forty-five, at which military service halts. 
But if some experience in active service, some knowledge of 
the art by which soldiers are disciplined and led, will be 
deemed sufficient title to a post of command, however modest 
the grade be, I shall not be wanting among the defenders of 
Paris.” 

“ My brave dear Yicomte, if you are past the age to serve, 
you are in the ripest age to command ; and with the testi- 
monials and the cross you won in Algeria, your application 


THE PARISIANS. 


u 


for employment will be received with gratitude by any general 
so able as Trochu.” 

“ I don’t know whether I shall apply to Trochu. I would 
rather be elected to command even by the Mobiles or the 
National Guard, of whom I have just spoken disparagingly ; 
and no doubt both corps will soon claim and win the right to 
choose their officers. But if elected, no matter by whom, I 
shall make a preliminary condition ; the men under me shall 
train, and drill, and obey, — soldiers of a very different kind 
from the youthful Pekins nourished on absinthe and self-con- 
ceit, and applauding that Bombastes Furioso, M. Hugo, when 
he assures the enemy that Paris will draw an idea from its 
scabbard. But here comes Savarin. Bon-jour^ my dear 
poet.” 

“ Don’t say good-day. An evil day for journalists and 
writers who do not out-Herod Blanqui and Pyat. I know 
not how I shall get bread and cheese. My poor suburban 
villa is to be pulled down by way of securing Paris; my 
journal will be suppressed by way of establishing the liberty 
of the press. It ventured to suggest that the people of 
France should have some choice in the form of their govern- 
ment.” 

“ That was very indiscreet, my poor Savarin,” said Victor ; 
“ I wonder your printing-office has not been pulled down. 
We are now at the moment when wise men hold their 
tongues.” 

“ Perhaps so, M. de Mauleon. It might have been wiser 
for all of us, you as well as myself, if we had not allowed our 
tongues to be so free before this moment arrived. We live to 


12 


THE PARISIANS. 


learn ; and if we ever have what may be called a passable 
government again, in which we may say pretty much what 
we like, there is one thing I will not do, I will not undermine 
that government without seeing a very clear way to the 
government that is to follow it. What say you, Pierre 
Firmin ?” 

“ Frankly, I say that I deserve your rebuke,” answered De 
Mauleon, thoughtfully. “ But, of course, you are going to 
take or send Madame Savarin out of Paris?” 

“ Certainly. We have made a very pleasant party for our 
hegira this evening — among others the Morleys. Morley is 
terribly disgusted. A Bed Bepublican slapped him on the 
shoulder and said, ‘ American, we have a republic as well as 
you.’ ‘ Pretty much you know about republics,’ growled 
Morley, ‘a French republic is as much like ours as a baboon 
is like a man.’ On which the Red roused the mob, who 
dragged the American off to the nearest station of the Na- 
tional Guard, where he was accused of being a Prussian spy. 
With some difficulty, and lots of brag about the sanctity of 
the stars and stripes, he escaped with a reprimand, and caution 
how to behave himself in future. So he quits a city in which 
there no longer exists freedom of speech. My wife hoped to 
induce Mademoiselle Cicogna to accompany us; I grieve to 
say she refuses. You know she is engaged in marriage to 
Gustave Rameau ; and his mother dreads the effect that these 
Red clubs and his own vanity may have upon his excitable 
temperament if the influence of Mademoiselle Cicogna be 
withdrawn.” 

“ How could a creature so exquisite as Isaura Cicogna ever 


THE PARISIA NS. 


13 


find fascination in Gustave Rameau?” exclaimed Enguer- 
rand. 

“A woman like lier,” answered De Maul4on, “always finds 
a fascination in self-sacrifice.” 

“ I think you divine the truth,” said Savarin, rather 
mournfully. “ But I must bid you good-by. May we live to 
shake hands riunis sous des meilleurs auspices.^' 

Here Savarin hurried off, and the other two men strolled 
into the Champs Elys4es, which were crowded with loungers, 
gay and careless, as if there had been no disaster at Sedan, no 
overthrow of an empire, no enemy on its road to Paris. 

In fact, the Parisians, at once the most incredulous and the 
most credulous of all populations, believed that the Prussians 
would never be so impertinent as to come in sight of the 
gates. Something would occur to stop them ! The king 
had declared he did not war on Frenchmen, but on the Em- 
peror : the Emperor gone, the war was over. A democratic 
republic was instituted. A horrible thing in its way, it is 
true ; hut how could the Pandour tyrant brave the infection 
of democratic doctrines among his own barbarian armies? 
Were not placards, addressed to our “ German brethren,” 
posted upon the walls of Paris, exhorting the Pandours to 
fraternize with their fellow-creatures ? Was not Victor Hugo 
going to publish “ a letter to the German people ? Had not 
Jules Favre graciously offered peace, with the assurance that 
France would not cede a stone of her fortresses — an inch of 
her territory ? She would pardon the invaders, and not march 
upon Berlin !” To all these and many more such incontest- 
able proofs that the idea of a siege was moonshine did En- 


14 


THE PARISIANS. 


gu errand and Victor listen as they joined group after group 
of their fellow-countrymen ; nor did Paris cease to harbor 
such pleasing illusions, amusing itself with piously laying 
crowns at the foot of the statue of Strasbourg, swearing “ they 
would be worthy of their Alsatian brethren,” till on the 19 th 
of September the last telegram was received, and Paris was 
cut off from the rest of the world by the iron line of the 
Prussian invaders. “ Tranquil and terrible,” says Victor 
Hugo, “ she awaits the invasion ! A volcano needs no 
assistance.” 


CHAPTER XIL 

We left Graham Vane slowly recovering from the attack 
of fever which had arrested his journey to Berlin in quest 
of the Count von Rudesheim. He was, however, saved the 
prosecution of that journey, and his direction turned back to 
France, by a German newspaper which informed him that the 
King of Prussia was at Rheims, and that the Count von 
Rudesheim was among the eminent personages gathered there 
around their sovereign. In conversing the same day with the 
kindly doctor who attended him, Graham ascertained that 
this German noble held a high command in the German 
armies, and bore a no less distinguished reputation as a wise 
political counselor than he had earned as a military chief. 
As soon as he was able to travel, and indeed before the good 
doctor sanctioned his departure, Graham took his way to 
Rheims, uncertain, however, whether the Count would still 


THE PARISIANS. 


15 


be found there. I spare the details of his journey, interesting 
as they were. On reaching the famous, and in the eyes of 
Legitimists the sacred, city, the Englishman had no difficulty 
in ascertaining the house, not far from the cathedral, in which 
the Count von- Rudesheim had taken his temporary abode. 
Walking towards it from the small hotel in which he had been 
lucky enough to find a room disengaged — slowly, for he was 
still feeble — he was struck by the quiet conduct of the German 
soldiery, and, save in their appearance, the peaceful aspect of 
the streets. Indeed, there was an air of festive gayety about 
the place, as in an English town in which some popular regi- 
ment is quartered. The German soldiers thronged the shops, 
buying largely ; lounged into the cafes; here and there at- 
tempted fiirtations with the grisettes^ who laughed at their 
French and blushed at their compliments ; and in their good- 
humored, somewhat bashful cheeriness there was no trace of 
the insolence of conquest. 

But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his 
ear caught a grave and solemn music, which he at first sup- 
posed to come from within the building. But as he paused 
and looked round he saw a group of the German military, on 
whose stalwart forms and fair manly earnest faces the setting 
sun cast its calm lingering r^ys. They were chanting, in 
voices not loud but deep, Luther’s majestic hymn, “ Nun 
danket alle Gott '' The chant awed even the ragged beggar- 
boys who had followed the Englishman, as they ibllowed any 
stranger, would have followed King William himself, whining 
for alms. “ What a type of the difference between the two 
nations !” thought Graham j “ the Marseillaise, and Luther’s 


16 


THE PARISIANS. 


Hymn!” While thus meditating and listening, a man in a 
general’s uniform came slowly out of the cathedral, with his 
hands clasped behind his back, and his head bent slightly 
downwards. He, too, paused on hearing the hymn, then 
unclasped his hands and beckoned to one of the officers, to 
whom approaching he whispered a word or two, and passed 
on towards the episcopal palace. The hymn hushed, and 
the singers quietly dispersed. Graham divined rightly that 
the general had thought a hymn thanking the God of battles 
might wound the feelings of the inhabitants of the vanquished 
city — not, however, that any of them 'were likely to under- 
stand the language in which the thanks were uttered. Graham 
followed the measured steps of the general, whose hands were 
again clasped behind his back — the musing habit of Von 
Moltke, as it had been of Napoleon the First. 

Continuing his way, the Englishman soon reached the 
house in which the Count von Kudesheim was lodged, and, 
sending in his card, was admitted at once, through an ante- 
room in which sat two young men, subaltern officers, appar- 
ently employed in draughting maps, into the presence of the 
Count. 

“ Pardon me,” said Graham, after the first conventional 
salutation, “ if I interrupt you for a moment or so in the 
midst of events so grave, on a matter that must seem to you 
very trivial.” 

“ Nay,” answered the Count, “ there is nothing so trivial 
in this world but what there will be some one to whom it is 
important. Say how I can serve you.” 

“ I think, M. le Comte, that you once received in your 


THE PARISIANS. 


17 


household, as teacher or governess, a French lady, Madame 
Marigny.” 

“ Yes, I remember her well — a very handsome woman. 
My wife and daughter took great interest in her. She was 
married out of my house.” 

“ Exactly — ^and to whom ?” 

“ An Italian of good birth, who was then employed by the 
Austrian government in some minor post, and subsequently 
promoted to a better one in the Italian dominion, which then 
belonged to the house of Hapshurg, after which we lost sight 
of him and his wife.”-. 

“ An Italian — what was his name?” 

“Ludovico Cicogna.” 

“ Cicogna !” exclaimed Graham, turning very pale. “ Are 
you sure that was the name ?” 

“ Certainly. He was a cadet of a very noble house, and 
disowned by relations too patriotic to forgive him for accept- 
ing employment under the Austrian government.” 

“ Can you not give me the address of the place in Italy to 
which he was transferred on leaving Austria?” 

“ No ; but if the information be necessary to you, it can be 
obtained easily at Milan, where the head of the family resides, 
or indeed in Vienna, through any ministerial bureau.” 

“ Pardon me one or two questions more. Had Madame 
Marigny any children by a former husband?” 

“ Not that I know of : I never heard so. Signor Cicogna 
was a widower, and had, if I remember right, children by his 
first wife, who was also a Frenchwoman. Before he obtained 
office in Austria, he resided, I believe, in France. I do not 
VoL. III. 2 


18 


THE PARISIANS. 


remember bow many children he had by his first wife. I 
never saw them. Our ac{][uaintance began at the baths of 
Tdplitz, where he saw and fell violently in love with Madame 
Marigny. After their marriage they went to his post, which 
was somewhere, I think, in the Tyrol. We saw no more of 
them ; but my wife and daughter kept up a correspondence” 
with the Signora Cicogna for a short time. It ceased alto- 
gether when she removed into Italy.” 

“ You do not even know if the Signora is still living ?” 
No.” 

“ Her husband, I am told, is dead.” 

“ Indeed ! I am concerned to hear it. A good-looking, 
lively, clever man. I fear he must have lost all income when 
the Austrian dominions passed to the house of Sa^oy.” 

“ Many thanks for your information. I can detain you no 
longer,” said Graham, rising. 

“ Nay, I am not very busy at this moment ; but I fear we 
Germans have plenty of work on our hands.” 

“I had hoped that, now the French Emperor, against 
whom your king made war, was set aside, his Prussian majesty 
would make peace with the French people.” 

“ Most willingly would he do so if the French people would 
let him. But it must be through a French government legally 
chosen by the people. And they have chosen none ! A mob 
at Paris sets up a provisional administration, that commences 
by declaring that it will not give up ‘ an inch of its territory 
nor a stone of its fortresses.’ No terms of peace can be made 
with such men holding such talk.” After a few words more 
over the state of public affairs, — in which Graham expressed 


THE PARISIANS. 


19 


the English side of affairs, which was all for generosity to the 
vanquished, and the Count argued much more ably on the 
G-erman, which was all for security against the aggressions 
of a people that would not admit itself to be vanquished, — - 
the short interview closed. 

As Graham at night pursued his journey to Vienna, there 
came into his mind Isaura’s song of the Neapolitan fisherman. 
Had he, too, been blind to the image on the rock? Was it 
possible that, all the while he had been resisting the impulse 
of his heart until the discharge of the mission intrusted to 
him freed his choice and decided his fortunes, the very per- 
son of whom he was in search had been before him, then to 
be forever won, lost to him now forever? Could Isaura 
Cicognar’iSS the child of Louise Duval by Richard King? 
She could not have been her child by Cicogna: the dates 
forbade that hypothesis. Isaura must have been five years 
old when Louise married the Italian. 

Arrived at Milan, Graham quickly ascertained that the 
post to which Ludovico Cicogna had been removed was in 
Verona, and that he had there died eight years ago. Nothing 
was to be learned as to his family or his circumstances at the 
time of his death. The people of whose history we know the 
least are the relations we refuse to acknowledge. Graham 
continued his journey to Verona. There he found, on inquiry, 
that the Cicognas had occupied an apartment in a house which 
stood at the outskirts of the town and had been since pulled 
down to make way for some public improvements. But his 
closest inquiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to the 
all-important questions as to Ludovico Cicogna’s family. His 


20 


THE PARISIANS. 


political alienation from the Italian cause, which was nowhere! 
more ardently espoused than at Verona, had rendered him 
very unpopular. He visited at no Italian houses. Such 
society as he had was confined to the Austrian military within- 
the Quadrilateral or at Venice, to which city he made fre- 
quent excursions ; was said to lead there a free and gay life, 
very displeasing to the Signora, whom he left in Verona. 
She was but little seen, and faintly remembered as very 
handsome and proud-looking. Yes, there were children — a 
girl, and a boy several years younger than the girl ; but 
whether she was the child of the Signora by a former mar- 
riage, or whether the Signora was only the child’s stepmother, 
no one could say. The usual clue in such doubtful matters, 
obtainable through servants, was here missing. The Cicognas 
had kept only two servants, and both were Austrian subjects, 
who had long left the country, — their very names forgotten. 

Graham now called to mind the Englishman Selby, for 
whom Isaura had such grateful affection, as supplying to her 
the place of her father. This must have been the English- 
man whom Louise Duval had married after Cicogna’s death. 
It would be no diflScult task, surely, to ascertain where he 
had resided. Easy enough to ascertain all that Graham 
Wanted to know from Isaura herself, if a letter could reach 
her. But, as he knew by the journals, Paris was now in- 
vested — cut off from all communication with the world be- 
yond. Too irritable, anxious, and impatient to wait for the 
close of the siege, though he never suspected it could last so 
long as it did, he hastened to Venice, and there learned 
through the British consul that the late Mr. Selby was a 


THE PARISIANS. 


21 


learned antiquarian, an accomplished general scholar, a fa‘ 
natico in music, a man of gentle temper though reserved 
manners; had at one time lived much at Venice: after his 
marriage with the Signora Cicogna, he had taken up his 
abode near Florence. To Florence Graham now wtnt. He 
found the villa on the skirts of Fiesole at which Mr. Selby 
had resided. The peasant who had ofl&ciated as gardener and 
shareholder in the profits of vines and figs was still, with his 
wife, living on the place. Both man and wife remembered 

the Inglese well ; spoke of him with great affection, of his 

# 

wife with great dislike. They said her manners were very 
haughty, her temper very violent ; that she led the Inglese a 
very unhappy life; that there were a girl and a boy, both 
hers by a former marriage; but when closely questioned 
whether they were sure that the girl was the Signora’s child 
by the former husband, or whether she was not the child of 
that husband by a former wife, they could not tell; they 
could only say that both were called by the same name — 
Cicogna; that the boy was the Signora’s favorite — that in- 
deed she seemed wrapt up in him ; that he died of a rapid 
decline a few months after Mr. Selby had hired the place, 
and that shortly after his death the Signora left the place and 
never returned to it ; that it was little more than a year that 
she had lived with her husband before this final separation 
took place. The girl remained with Mr. Selby, who cherished 
and loved her as his own child. Her Christian name was 
Isaura, the boy’s Luigi. A few years later, Mr. Selby left 
the villa, and went to Naples, where they heard he had died. 
They could give no information as to what had become of his 


22 


THE PARISIANS. 


wife. Since the death of her boy that lady had become very 
much changed — her spirits quite broken, no longer violent. 
She would sit alone and weep bitterly. The only person out 
of her family she would receive was the priest ; till the boy’s 
death she had never seen the priest, nor been known to attend 
divine service. 

Was the priest living?” 

“ Oh, no ; he had been dead two years. A most excellent 
man — a saint,” said the peasant’s wife. 

Good priests are like good women,” said the peasant, 
(Jryly j » there are plenty of them, but they are all under 
ground.” 

On which remark the wife tried to box his ears. The 
contadino had become a free-thinker since the accession of 
the house of Savoy. His wife remained a good Catholic. 

Said the peasant as, escaping from his wife, he walked into 
the high-road with Graham “ My belief, Eccellenza^ is that 
the priest did all the mischief.” 

“ What mischief?” 

“ Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband. The 
Inglese was not a Catholic. I heard the priest call him a 
heretic. And the Padre^ who, though not so bad as some of 
his cloth, was a meddling bigot, thought it perhaps best for 
her soul that it should part company with a heretic’s person. 
I can’t say for sure, but I think that was it. The Padre 
seemed to triumph when the Signora was gone.” 

Graham mused. The peasant’s supposition was not im- 
probable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to be 

of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind — was just one 


THE PARISIANS. 


23 


of those who, in a moment of great sorrow and estranged 
from the ordinary household affections, feel, though but im- 
perfectly, the necessity of a religion, and, ever in extremes, 
pass at once from indifferentism into superstition. 

Arrived at Naples,. Graham heard little of Selby except as 
a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the 
operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura ; of the kindr 
ness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her when 
left by Selby’s death alone in the world ; of the interest 
which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent 
as the great French writer had created for Isaura in the 
artistic circles ; of the intense sensation her appearance, her 
voice, her universal genius, had made in that society, and 
the brilliant hopes of her subsequent career on the stage the 
cognoscenti had formed. No one knew anything of her 
mother ; no one entertained a doubt that Isaura was by birth 
a Cicogna. Graham could not learn the present whereabouts 
of Madame de Grantmesnil. She had long left Naples, and 
had been last heard of at Genoa; was supposed to have 
returned to France a little before the war. In France she 
had no fixed residence. 

The simplest mode of obtaining authentic information 
whether Isaura was the daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by hi? 
first wife — namely, by registration of her birth — failed him ; 
because, as Von Budesheira had said, his first wife was a 
Frenchwoman. The children had been born somewhOre in 
France, no one could even guess where. No one had ever 
seen the first wife, who had never appeared in Italy, nor had 
even heard what was her maiden name. 


24 


THE PARISIANS. 


Graham, meanwhile, was not aware that Isaura was still in 
the besieged city, whether or not already married to Gustave 
Rameau ; so large a number of the women had quitted Paris 
before the siege began, that he had reason to hope she was 
among them. He heard through an American that the 
Morleys had gone to England before the Prussian investment ; 
perhaps Isaura had gone with them. He wrote to Mrs. 
Morley, inclosing his letter to the Minister of the United 
States at the Court of St. James, and while still at Naples 
received her answer. It was short, and malignantly bitter. 
“ Both myself and Madame Savarin, backed by Signora 
Venosta, earnestly entreated Mademoiselle Cicogna to quit 
Paris, to accompany us to England. Her devotion to her 
affianced husband would not permit her to listen to us. It 
is only an Englishman who could suppose Isaura Cicogna to 
be one of those women who do not insist on sharing the 
perils of those they love. You ask whether she was the 
daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by his former marriage, or of 
his second wife by him. I cannot answer. I don’t even 
know whether Signor Cicogna ever had a former wife. Isaura 
Cicogna never spoke to me of her parents. Permit me to 
ask, what business is it of yours now? Is it the English 
pride that makes you wish to learn whether on both sides she 
is of noble family ? How can that discovery alter your re- 
lations towards the affianced bride of another ?” 

On receipt of this letter Graham quitted Naples,, and 
shortly afterwards found himself at Versailles. He* obtained 
permission to establish himself there, though the English 
were by no means popular. Thus near to Isaura, thus 


THE PARISIANS. 


25 


sternly separated from her, Graham awaited the close of the 
siege. Few among those at Versailles believed that the 
Parisians would endure it much longer. Surely they would 
capitulate before the bombardment, which the Germans them- 
selves disliked to contemplate as a last resource, could com- 
mence. 

[n his own mind Graham was convinced that Isaura was 
the child of Kichard King. It seemed to him probable that 
Louise Duval, unable to assign any real name to the daughter 
of the marriage she disowned, — neither the name borne by 
the repudiated husband, nor her own maiden name, — would, 
on taking her daughtet to her new home, have induced 
Dicogna to give the child his name ; or that after Cicogna’s 
death she herself had so designaited the girl. A dispassionate 
confidant, could Graham have admitted any confidant what- 
ever, might have suggested the more than equal probability 
that Isaura was Cicogna’s daughter by his former espousal. 
But then what could have become of Bichard King’s child ? 
To part with the fortune in his hands, to relinquish all the 
ambitious dreams which belonged to it, cost Graham Vane no 
pang; but he writhed with indignant grief when he thought 
that the wealth of Bichard King’s heiress was to pass to the 
hands of Gustave Bameau — that this was to be the end of 
his researches — this the result of the sacrifice his sense of 
honor imposed on him. And now that there was the proba- 
bility that he must convey to Isaura this large inheritance, 
the practical difficulty of inventing some reason for such a 
donation, which he had, while at a distance, made light of, 
became seriously apparent. How coidd he say to Isaura that 
VOL. III.— B 


26 


THE PARISIANS. 


he had £200,000 in trust for her, without naming any one 
so devising it ? Still more, how constitute himself her guardian, 
BO as to secure it to herself, independently of her husband ? 
Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated with Rameau, or too 
romantically unselfish, to permit the fortune so mysteriously 
conveyed being exclusively appropriated to herself. And if 
she were already married to Rameau, and if he were armed 
with the right to inquire into the source of this fortune, how 
exposed to the risks of disclosure would become the secret 
Graham sought to conceal ! Such a secret, affecting the 
memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on the scutcheon 
of the living, in the irreverent hands of a Gustave Rameau, 
— it was too dreadful to contemplate such a hazard. And 
yet, if Isaura were the missing heiress, could Graham Vane 
admit any excuse for basely withholding from her, for coolly 
retaining to himself, the wealth for which he was responsible ? 
Yet, torturing as were these communings with himself, they 
were mild in their torture compared to the ever-growing 
anguish of the thought that in any case the only woman he 
had ever loved — ever could love, — who might but for his own 
scruples and prejudices have been the partner of his life,— 
was perhaps now actually the wife of another ; and, as such, 
in what terrible danger ! Famine within the walls of the 
doomed city; without, the engines of death waiting for a 
signal. So near to her, and yet so far ! So willing to die 
for her, if for her he could not live ; and, with all his devotion, 
all his intellect, all his wealth, so powerless ! 


THE PARISIANS. 


27 



CHAPTER XIIL 

It is now tlie middle of November — a Sunday. The day 
has been mild, and is drawing towards its close. The Parisians 
have been enjoying the -sunshine. Under the leafless trees in 
the public gardens and the Champs Elysees children have 
been at play. On the Boulevards the old elegance of gayety 
is succeeded by a livelier animation. Itinerant musicians 
gather round them ragged groups. Fortune-tellers are in 
great request, especially among the once brilliant Laises and 
Thaises, now looking more shabby, to whom they predict the 
speedy restoration of nabobs and Russians and golden joys. 
Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the Evil One, who 
wears the Prussian spiked helmet and whose face has been 
recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck. Punch 
draws to his show a laughing audience of Mohlots and recruits 
to the new companies of the National Guard. Members of 
the once formidable police, now threadbare and hunger- 
pinched, stand side by side with unfortunate beggars and 
sinister-looking patriots who have served their time in the 
jails or galleys. 

Uniforms of all variety are conspicuous — the only evidence 
visible of an enemy at the walls. But the aspects of the 
wearers of warlike accoutrements are dehonnaire and smiling, 
as of revelers on a holiday of peace. Among these defenders 
of their country, at the door- of a crowded cafe^ stands Frederio 


28 


THE PARISIANS. 


Lemercier, superb in the costume, bran-new, of a National 
Guard, — his dog Fox tranquilly reposing on its haunches, 
with eyes fixed upon its fellow-dog philosophically musing 
on the edge of Punch’s show, whose master is engaged in the 
conquest jf the Bismarck fiend. 

“ Lemercier,” cried the Vicomte de Breze, approaching the 
cafe, “I scarcely recognize you in’ that martial guise. You 
look magnifique — the galons become you. Peste ! an officer 
already ?” 

“ The National Guards and Mobiles are permitted to choose 
their own officers, as you are aware. I have been elected, 
but to subaltern grade, by the warlike patriots of my depart- 
ment. Enguerrand de Yandemar is elected a captain of the 
Mobiles in his, and Victor de Mauldon is appointed to the 
command of a battalion of the National Guards. But I soar 
above j ealousy at such a moment ; 

‘Rome a choisi mon bras; je n’examine rien.’” 

“ You have no right to be jealous. De Mauleon has had 
experience and won distinction in actual service, and, from all 
I hear, is doing wonders with his men — has got them not only 
to keep but to love drill. I heard no less an authority than 

General Y say that if all the officers of the National 

Guard were like De Mauleon, that body would give an example 
of discipline to the line.” 

“ I say nothing as to the promotion of a real soldier like 
the Yicomte — but a Parisian dandy like Enguerrand de 
Yandemar !” 

“ You forget that Enguerrand received a military educa- 
tion — an advantage denied to you.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


29 


“ What does that matter ? Who cares for education 
nowadays ? Besides, have I not been training ever since 
the 4th of September, to say nothing of the hard work on 
the ramparts ?” 

“ Parlez-Tnoi de cela : it is indeed hard work on the ram- 
parts, Inf andum dolorem quorum pars magna fai. Take the 
day duty. What with rising at seven o’clock, and being 
drilled between a middle-aged and corpulent grocer on one 
side and a meagre beardless barber’s apprentice on the other; 
what with going to the bastions at eleven, and seeing half 
one’s companions drunk before twelve ; what with trying to 
keep their fists off one’s face when one politely asks them not 
to call one’s general a traitor or a poltroon, — the work of the 
ramparts would be insupportable, if I did not take a pack of 
cards with me and enjoy a quiet rubber with three other 
heroes in some sequestered corner. As for night work, 
nothing short of the indomitable fortitude of a Parisian could 
sustain it ; the tents made expressly not to be waterproof, like 
the groves of the Muses, — 

'per 

Quos et aquae subeant et aurae.' 

A fellow-companion of mine tucks himself up in my rug and 
pillows his head on my knapsack. I remonstrate — he swears ; 
the other heroes wake up and threaten to thrash us both ; and 
just when peace is made, and one hopes for a wink of sleep, 
a detachment of spectators, chiefly gamins^ .coming to see that 
all is safe in the camp, strike up the Marseillaise. Ah, the 
world will ring to the end of time with the sublime attitude 
of Paris in the face of the Vandal invadei-s, especially when 


30 


THE PARISIANS. 


it learns that the very shoes we stand in are made of card- 
board. In vain we complain. The contractor for shoes is a 
stanch republican, and jobs by right divine. May I ask if 
you have dined yet ?” 

“ Heavens I no ; it is too early. But I am excessively 
hungry. I had only a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, 
and the brute was tough. In reply to your question, may I 
put another — Did you lay in plenty of stores?” 

“ Stores ? no ; I am a bachelor5 and rely on the stores of 
my married friends.” 

Poor De Breze !: I sympathize with you, for I am in 
the same boat, and dinner-invitations have become monstrous 
rare.” 

“ Oh, but you are so confoundedly rich ! What to you are 
forty francs for a rabbit, or eighty francs for a turkey ?” 

“ AVell, I suppose I am rich, but I have no money, and the 
ungrateful restaurants will not give me credit. They don’t 
believe in better days.” 

“ How can you want money ?” 

“ Very naturally. I had invested my capital famously — 
the best speculations — partly in house-rents, partly in com- 
pany shares ; and houses pay no rents, and nobody will buy 
company shares. I had one thousand napoleons on hand, it 
is true, when Duplessis left Paris — much more, I thought, 
than I could possibly need, for I never believed in the siege. 
But during the first few weeks I played at whist with bad 
luck, and since then so many old friends have borrowed of me 
that I doubt if I have two hundred francs left. I have dis- 
patched four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and balloon, entreat 


THE PARISIANS. 


31 


;ing him to send me twenty-five thousand francs by some 
trusty fellow who will pierce the Prussian lines. I have had 
two answers — 1st, that he will find a man ; 2d, that the man 
is found and on his way. Trust to that man, my dear friend, 
and meanwhile lend me two hundred francs.” 

“ Mon cher^ desoU to refuse ; but I was about to ask you to 
share your two hundred francs with me, who live chiefly by 
my pen ; and that resource is cut off. Still, il faut vivre — 
one must dine.” 

“ That is a fact, and we will dine together to-day at my 
expense ; limited liability, though — eight francs ti head.” 

“ Generous Monsieur, I accept. Meanwhile, let us take a 
turn towards the Madeleine.” 

The two Parisians quit the cq/e, and proceed up the Boule- 
vard. On their way they encounter Savarin. “ Why,” said 
De Breze, “ I thought you had left Paris with Madame.” 

“ So I did, and deposited her safely with the Morleys at 
Boulogne. Those kind Americans were going to England, 
and they took her with them. But I quit Paris! I ! No 1 
I am old ; I am growing obese ; I have always been short- 
sighted ; I can neither wield a sword nor handle a musket. 
But Paris needs defenders ; and every moment I was away 
from her I sighed to myself, ^11 faut etre IdT I returned 
before the Vandals had possessed themselves of our railways, 
the convoi overcrowded with men like myself, who had re- 
moved wives and families; and when we asked each other 
why we went back, every answer was the same, ‘ 11 faut etre 
W No, poor child, no — I have nothing to give you.” 

These last words were addressed to a woman young and 


32 


THE PARISIANS. 


handsome, with a dress that a few weeks ago might have been 
admired for taste and elegance by the lady leaders of the torij 
but was now darned, and dirty, and draggled. 

“ Monsieur, I did not stop you to ask for alms. You do 
not seem to remember me, M. Savarin.” 

“ But I do,” said Lemercier; “surely I address Mademoi- 
selle Julie Caumartin.” 

“Ah, excuse me, le petit Frederic,” said Julie, with a 
sickly attempt at coquettish sprightliness ; “ I had no eyes 
except for M. Savarin.” 

“ And why only for me, my poor child?” asked the kind- 
hearted author. 

“ Hush !” She drew him aside. “ Because you can give 
me news of that monster Gustave. It is not true, it cannot 
be true, that he is going to be married ?” 

“ Nay, surely. Mademoiselle, all connection between you 
and young Bameau has ceased for months — ceased from the 
date of that illness in July which nearly carried him off.” 

“ I resigned him to the care of his mother,” said the girl ; 
“ but when he no longer needs a mother he belongs to me. 
Oh, consider, M. Savarin, for his sake I refused the most 
splendid offers I When he sought me, I had my coupe, my 
opera-box, my cachemires, my jewels. The Bussians — the 
English — vied for my smiles. But I loved the man. I never 
loved before : I shall never love again ; and after the sacrifices 
I have made for him, nothing shall induce me to give him up. 
Tell me, I entreat, my dear M. Savarin, where he is hiding. 
He has left the parental roof, and they refused there to give 
me his address.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


33 


“ My poor girl, don’t be mechante. It is quite true that 
Gustave Rameau is engaged to be married ; and any attempt 
of yours to create scandal ” 

“ Monsieur,” interrupted Julie, vehemently, “ don’t talk to 
me about scandal ! The man is mine, and no one else shall 
have him. His address ?” 

“ Mademoiselle,” cried Savarin, angrily, “ find it out for 
yourself.” Then — ^repentant of rudeness to one so yoing 
and so desolate — he added, in mild expostulatory accents, 
“ Come, come, ma belle enfant^ be reasonable ; Gustave is no 
loss. He is reduced to poverty.” 

“ So much the better. When he was well ofi* I never cost 
him more than a supper at the Maison i)oree ; and if he is 
poor he shall marry me, and I will support him !” 

“ You ! — and how ?” 

“ By my profession when peace comes ; and meanwhile I 
have ofiers from a cafi to recite warlike songs. Ah I you 
shake your head incredulously. The ballet-dancer recite 
verses ? Yes ! he taught me to recite his own So^/ez bon 
pour mol. M. Savarin I do say where I can find mon 
hommer 
“ No.” 

“ That is your last word ?” 

“It is.” 

The girl drew her thin shawl round her and hurried oflT. 
Savarin rejoined his friends. “ Is that the way you console 
yourself for the absence of Madame?” asked De Br4z<5, dryly 

“‘Fie!” cried Savarin, indignantly; “such bad jokes are 
ill-timed. What strange mixtures of good and bad, of noble 
VOL. III.— B* 3 


34 


THE PARISIANS. 


and base, every stratum of Paris life contains I There is that 
pool girl, in one way contemptible, no doubt, and yet in 
another way she has an element of grandeur. On the whole, 
at Paris the women, with all their faults, are of finer mould 
than the men.” 

“ French gallantry has always admitted that truth,” said 
Lemercier. “ Fox, Fox, Fox.” Uttering this cry, he darted 
forward after the dog, who had strayed a few yards to salute 
another dog led by a string, and caught the animal in his 
arms. “Pardon me,” he exclaimed, returning to his friends, 
“ but there are so many snares for dogs at present. They 
are just coming into fashion for roasts, and Fox is so plump.” 

“ I thought,” said Savaxin, “ that it was resolved at all the 
sporting-clubs that, be the pinch of famine ever so keen, the 
friend of man should not be eaten.” 

“ That was while the beef lasted ; but since we have 
come to cats, who shall predict immunity to dogs? Quid 
intacUim nefasti linquimusf Nothing is sacred from the 
hand*of rapine.” 

The church of the Madeleine now stood before them. 
Mohlots were playing pitch-and-toss on its steps. 

“ I don’t wish you to accompany me. Messieurs,” said 
Lemercier, apologetically, “but I am going to enter the 
church.” 

To pray?” asked De Breze, in profound astonishment. 

“ Not exactly ; but I want to speak to my friend Roche- 
briant, and I know I shall find him there.” 

“ Praying ?” again asked De Brez6. 

“Yes.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


35 


“ That is curious — a young Parisian exquisite at prayer-— 
that is worth seeing. Let us enter, too, Savarin.^’ 

They enter the church. It is filled, and even the skeptical 
l)e Brez4 is impressed and awed by the sight. An intense 
fervor pervades the congregation. The majority, it is true, 
are women, many of them in deep mourning, and many of 
their faces mourning deeper than the dress. Everywhere 
may be seen gushing tears, and everywhere faintly heard the 
sound of stifled sighs. Besides the women were men of all 
ages — young, middle-aged, old, with heads bowed and hands 
clasped, pale, grave, and earnest. Most of them were evidently 
of the superior grade in life — nobles, and the higher bour- 
geoisie ; few of the ouvrier class, very few, and these were of 
an earlier generation. I except soldiers, of whom there were 
many, from the provincial Mobiles, chiefly Bretons; you 
knew the Breton soldiers by the little cross worn on their 
Mpis. 

Among them Lemercier at once, distinguished the noble 
countenance of Alain de Bochebriant. De Breze and Savarin 
looked at each other with solemn eyes. I know not when 
either had last been within a churdh ; ; perhaps both were 
startled to find that religion still existed in Paris — and 
largely exist it does, though little seen on the surface of 
society, little to be estimated by the articles of journals and 
the reports of foreigners. Unhappily,, those among whom it 
exists are not the ruling class — are of the classes that are 
dominated over and obscured in every country the moment 
the populace becomes master. And at that moment the 
journals chiefly read were warring more against the Deity 


THE PARISIANS. 


than the Prussians — were denouncing soldiers who attended 
mass. “The gospel certainly makes a bad soldier,” writes 
the patriot Pyat. 

Lemercier knelt down quietly. The other two men crept 
noiselessly out, and stood waiting for him on the steps, watch- 
ing the Moblots (Parisian Mohlots) at play. 

“ I should not wait for the roturier if he had not promised 
me a ro^i,” said the Yicomte de Br4ze, with a pitiful attempt 
at the patrician wit of the ancien rigime. 

Savarin shrugged his shoulders. “ I am not included in 
the invitation,” said he, “ and therefore am free to depart. I 
must go and look up a former confrlre who was an enthusiastic 
Red Republican, and I fear does not get so much to eat since 
he has no longer an Emperor to abuse.” 

So Savarin went away. A few minutes afterwards Lemer- 
cier emerged from the church with Alain, 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“ I KNEW I should find you in the Madeleine,” said Le- 
mercier, “ and I wished much to know when you had news 
from Duplessis. He and your fair fiancee are with your aunt 
still staying at Rochebriant ?” 

“ Certainly. A pigeon arrived this morning with a few 
lines. All well there.” 

“ And Duplessis thinks, despite the war, that he shall be 


THE PARISIANS. 


37 


able, when the time comes, to pay Louvier the mortgage- 
sum ?” 

“ He never doubts that. His credit in London is so good. 
But of course all works of improvement are stopped.” 

“ Pray did he mention me ? — anything about the messenger 
who was to pierce the Prussian lines?” 

“ What ! has the man not arrived ? It is two weeks since 
he left.” ’ . ; • 

“ The Uhlans have no doubt shot him — ^the 'assassins, — 
and drunk up my twenty-five thousand francs — the thieves.” 

“I hope not. But in case of delay, Buplessis tells me, I 
am to remit to you two thousand francs for your present 
wants. I will send them to you this evening.” 

“ How the deuce do you possess such a sum ?” 

“ I came from Brittany with a purse well filled. Of course 
I could have no scruples in accepting money from my destined 
father-in-law.” 

“And you can spare this sum?” 

“ Certainly — the State now provides for me ; I am in com- 
mand of a Breton company.” 

' “ True. Come and dine with me and Be Brdze.” 

“Alas! I cannot. I have to see both the Vandemars be- 
fore I return to the camp for the night. And now — hush — 
come this way” (drawing Frederic farther from Be Breze) : 
“ I have famous news for you. A sortie on a grand scale is 
imminent ; in a few days we may hope for it.” 

“ I have heard that so often that I am incredulous.” 

“ Take it as a fact now.” 

“ What 1 Trochu has at last matured his plan ?” 


38 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ He has changed its original design, which was to cut 
through the Prussian lines to Pouen, occupying there the 
richest country for supplies, guarding the left bank of the 
Seine and a water-course to convoy them to Paris. The 
incidents of war prevented that; he has a better plan now. 
The victory of the Army of the Loire at Orleans opens a 
now enterprise. We shall cut our way through the Prussians, 
join that army, and with united forces fall on the enemy at 
the rear. Keep this a secret as yet, but rejoice with me that 
we shall prove to the invaders what men who fight for their 
native soil can do under the protection of Heaven.” 

“ Fox, Fox, mon cheri^'' said Lemercier, as he walked to- 
wards the Cafe Riche with De Breze ; “ thou shalt have a 
festin de Balthasar under the protection of Heaven.” 


CHAPTEB XV. 

On leaving Lemercier and De Br^z4, Savarin regained the 
Boulevard, and pausing every now and then to exchange a 
few words with acquaintances — the acquaintances of the genial 
author were numerous — turned into the quartier Chaussde 
d’Antin, and, gaining a small neat house with a richly-orna- 
mented /a^‘ac?e, mounted very clean well-kept stairs to a third 
story. On one of the doors on the landing-place was nailed a 
card, inscribed, “ Gustave Bameau, homme de lettresy Cer- 
tainly it is not usual in Paris thus to afficher one’s self aa 


THE PARISIANS. 


39 


a man of letters.” But Genius scorns what is usual. Had 
not Victor Hugo left in the hotel-books on the Rhino his 
designation “ liomme de lettres'^ ? Hid not the heir to one of 
the loftiest houses in the peerage of England, and who was 
also a first-rate amateur in painting, inscribe on his studio, 

when in Italy, “ , artistd' f Such examples, no doubt, 

were familiar to Gustave Rameau, and “ Jiomme de lettres'^ 
was on the scrap of pasteboard nailed to his door. 

Savarin rang; the door opened, and Gustave appeared. 
The poet was, of course, picturesquely attired. In his day 
of fashion he had worn within-doors a very pretty fanciful 
costume, designed after portraits of the young Raffaelle ; that 
costume he had preserved — he wore it now. It looked very 
threadbare, and the pourpoint very soiled. But the beauty 
of the poet’s face had survived the lustre of the garments. 
True, thanks to absinthe, the cheeks had become somewhat 
puffy and bloated. Gray was distinctly visible in the long 
ebon tresses. But still the beauty of the face was of that 
rare type which a Thorwaldsen or a Gibson seeking a model 
for a Narcissus would have longed to fix into marble. 

Gustave received his former chief with a certain air of re- 
served dignity ; led him into his chamber, only divided by a 
curtain from his accommodation for washing and slumber, and 
placed him in an arai-chair beside a dtowsy fire — fuel had 
already become very dear. 

“ Gustave,” said Savarin, “ are you in a mood favorable to 
a little serious talk ?” ' 

“ Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty too great not 
to command my profoundest interest.” 


40 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Thank yon, — and to begin : I, who know the world and 
mankind, advise you, who do not, never to meet a man who 
wishes to do you a kindness with an ungracious sarcasm. 
Irony is a weapon I ought to be skilled in, but weapons 
are used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who flourishes 
his rapier in the face of his friends.” 

“ I was not aware that M. Savarin still permitted me to 
regard him as a friend.” 

“ Because I discharged the duties of friend — ^remonstrated, 
advised, and warned. However, let bygones be bygones. I 
entreated you not to quit the safe shelter of the paternal roof. 
You insisted on doing so. I entreated you not to send to one 
of the most ferocious of the Bed, or rather the Communistic, 
journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but which would 
most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet orderly people, 
and compromise your future literary career for the sake of a 
temporary flash in the pan during a very evanescent period 
of revolutionary excitement. You scorned my adjurations, 
but, at all events, you had the grace not to append your true 
name to those truculent efiusions. In literature, if literature 
revive in France, we two are henceforth separated. But I 
do not forego the friendly interest I took in you in the days 
when you were so continually in my house. My wife, who 
liked you so cordially, implored me to look after you during 
her absence from Paris, and, mon jpauwe gargon^ it 

would grieve me very much if, when she comes back, I had 
to say to her, ‘ Gustave Bameau has thrown away the ch&nce 
of redemption and of happiness which you deemed was secure 
to him.’ A Toeil malade la lumilre nuit." 


THE PARISIANS. 


41 


So saying, he held out his hand kindly. 

Gustave, who was far from deficient in affectionate or tender 
impulses, took the hand respectfully and pressed it warmly. 

“ Forgive me if I have been ungracious, M. Savarin, and 
vouchsafe to hear my explanation.” 

“ Willingly, mon gar^on” 

“ When I became convalescent, well enough to leave my 
father’s house, there were circumstances which compelled me 
to do so. A young man accustomed to the life of a gargon 
can’t be always tied to his mother’s apron-strings.” 

“ Especially if the apron-pocket does not contain a bottle 
of absinthe,” said Savarin, dryly. “You may well color and 
try to look angry ; but I know that the doctor strictly forbade 
the use of that deadly liqueur and enjoined your mother to 
keep strict watch on your liability to its temptations. And 
hence one cause of your ennui under the paternal roof. But 
if there you could not imbibe absinthe, you were privileged to 
enjoy a much diviner intoxication. There you could have 
the foretaste of domestic bliss — the society of the girl you 
loved, and who was pledged to become your wife. Speak 
frankly. Did not that society itself begin to be wearisome ?” 

“ No,” cried Gustave, eagerly, “ it was not wearisome, 
but ” 

“Yes, but ” 

“ But it could not be all-sufficing to a soul of fire like 
mine.” 

“ Ilem,” murmured Savarin — “ a soul of fire ! This is very 
interesting ; pray go on.” 

“ The calm, cold, sister-like affection of a childish unde- 


42 


THE PARISIANS. 


veloped nature, which knew no passion except for art, and 
was really so little emancipated from the nursery as to take 
for serious truth all the old myths of religion — such com- 
panionship may be very soothing and pleasant when one is 
lying on one’s sofa and must live by rule; but when one 
regains the vigor of youth and health ” 

“ Do not pause,” said Savarin, gazing with more compas- 
sion than envy on that melancholy impersonation of youth 
and bealth. “ When one regains that vigor of which I my- 
self have no recollection^ what happens?” 

“ The thirst for excitement, the goads of ambition, the 
irresistible claims which the world urges upon genius, 
teturn.” 

“And that genius, finding itself at the North Pole amid 
Cimmerian darkness in the atmosphere of a childish intellect 
— in other words, the society of a pure-minded virgin, who, 
though a good romance- writer, writes nothing but what a 
virgin may read, and, though a hel esprit, says her prayers and 
goes to church — then genius — well, pardon my ignorance — 
what does genius do ?’ ’ 

“ Oh, M. Savarin, M. Savarin ! don’t let us talk any more. 
There is no sympathy between us. I cannot bear that blood- 
less, mocking, cynical mode of dealing with grand emotions, 
which belongs to the generation of the Doctrinaires. I am 
not a Thiers or a Guizot.’* 

“ Good heavens ! who ever accused you of being either? I 
did not mean to be cynical. Mademoiselle Cicogna has often 
said I am, but I did not think you would. Pardon me. I 
quite agree with the philosopher who asserted that the wis 


THE PARISIANS. 


43 


dom of the past was an imposture, that the meanest intellect 
now living is wiser than the greatest intellect which is buried 
in Pere la Chaise ; because the dwarf who follows the giant, 
when perched on the shoulders of the giant, sees farther than 
the giant ever could. Mlez. I go in for your generation. I 
abandon Guizot and Thiers. Do condescend and explain to 
my dull understanding, as the inferior mortal of a former age, 
what are the grand emotions which impel a soul of fire in 
your wiser generation. The thirst of excitement — what ex- 
citement? The goads of ambition — what ambition?” 

“A new social system is struggling from the dissolving 
elements of the old one, as, in the fables of priestcraft, the 
soul frees itself from the body which has become ripe for the 
grave. Of that new system I aspire to be a champion — a 
leader. Behold the excitement that allures me, the ambition 
that goads.” 

“Thank you,” said Savarin, meekly. “I am answered. I 
recognize the dwarf perched on the back of the giant. Quit- 
ting these lofty themes, I venture to address to you now 
one simple matter-of-fact question — How about Mademoi- 
selle Cicogna ? Do you think you can induce her to trans- 
plant herself to the new social system, which I presume will 
abolish, among other obsolete myths, the institution of mar- 
riage ?” 

“ M. Savarin, your question ofiends me. Theoretically I 
am opposed to the existing superstitions that encumber the 
very simple principle by which may be united two persons so 
long as they desire the union, and separated so soon as the 
union becomes distasteful to either. But I am perfectly 


44 


THE PARISIANS. 


aware that such theories would revolt a young lady like 
Mademoiselle Cicogna. I have never even named them to 
her, and our engagement holds good.” 

‘‘ Engagement of marriage ? No period for the ceremony 
fixed?” 

“ That is not my fault. I urged it on Isaura with all 
earnestness before I left my father’s house.” 

“ That was long after the siege had begun. Listen to me, 
Gustave. No persuasion of mine or my wife’s, or Mrs. 
Morley’s, could induce Isaura to quit Paris while it was yet 
time. She said very simply that, having pledged her. truth 
and hand to you, it would be treason to honor and duty if 
she should allow any considerations for herself to be even 
discussed so long as you needed her presence. You were 
then still suffering, and, though convalescent, not without 
danger of a relapse. And your mother said to her — I heard 
the words — ‘ ’Tis not for his bodily health I could dare to ask 
you to stay, when every man who can afford it is sending 
away his wife, sisters, daughters. As for that, I should 
suffice to tend him ; but if you go, I resign all hope for the 
health of his mind and his soul.’ I think at Paris there 
may be female poets and artists whom that sort of argument 
would not have much influenced. But it so happens that 
Isaura is not a Parisienne. She believes in those old myths 
which you think fatal to sympathize with yourself ; and those 
old myths also lead her to believe that where a woman has 
promised she will devote her life to a man, she cannot forsake 
him when told by his mother that she is necessary to the 
health of his mind and his soul. Stay. Before you inter- 


THE PARISIANS. 


45 


rupt me, let me finisli what I have to say. It appears that, 
BO soon as your bodily health was improved, you felt that 
your mind and your soul could take care of themselves; and 
certainly it seems to me that Isaura Cicogna is no longer of 
the smallest use to either.” 

Rameau was evidently much disconcerted by this speech, 
lie saw what Savarin was driving at — the renunciation of all 
bond between Isaura and himself. He was not prepared for 
such renunciation. He still felt for the Italian as much of 
love as he could feel for any woman who did not kneel at his 
feet, as at those of Apollo' condescending to the homage of 
Arcadian maids. But, on the one hand, he felt that many 
circumstances had occurred since the disaster at Sedan to 
render Isaura a very much less desirable partie than she had 
been when he had first wrung from her the pledge of be- 
trothal. In the palmy times of a government in which 
literature and art commanded station and insured fortune, 
Isaura, whether as authoress or singer, was a brilliant mar- 
riage for Gustave Rameau. She had also then an assured 
and competent, if modest, income. But when times change, 
people change with them. As to income for the moment 
(and Heaven only could say how long that moment might last), 
Isaura’s income had disappeared. It will be recollected that 
Louvier had invested her whole fortune in the houses to be 
built in the street called after his name. No houses, even 
when built, paid any rent now. Louvier had quitted Paris ; 
and Isaura could only be subsisting upon such small sum as 
she might have had in hand before the siege commenced. All 
career in such literature and art as Isaura adorned was at a 


46 


THE PARISIANS. 


dead stop. Now, to do Rameau justice, lie was by no means 
an avaricious or mercenary man. But he yearned for modes 
of life to which money was essential. He liked his “ com- 
forts;” and his comforts included the luxuries of elegance 
and show — comforts not to be attained by marriage with 
Isaura under existing circumstances. 

Nevertheless, it is quite true that he had urged her to 
marry him at once, before he had quitted his father’s house ; 
and her modest shrinking from such proposal, however excel- 
lent the reasons for delay in the national calamities of the 
time, as well as the poverty which the calamity threatened, 
had greatly wounded his amour-propre. He had always felt 
that her affection for him was not love ; and though he could 
reconcile himself to that conviction when many solid advan- 
tages. were attached to the prize of her love, and when he was 
ill, and penitent, and maudlin, and the calm affection of a 
saint seemed to him infinitely preferable to the vehement 
passion of a sinner, — yet when Isaura was only Isaura by 
herself — Isaura minus all the et cetera which had previously 
been taken into accpunt — the want of adoration for himself 
very much lessened her value. 

Still, though he acquiesced in the delayed fulfillment of 
the engagement with Isaura, he had no thought of withdraw- 
ing from the engagement itself, and after a slight pause he 
replied ; “ You do me great injustice if you suppose that the 
occupations to which I devote myself render me less sensible 
to the merits of Mademoiselle Cicogna, or less eager for our 
union. On the contrary, I will confide to you — as a man of 
the world — one main reason why I quitted my father’s house, 


THE PARISIANS. 


47 


and why I desire to keep my present address a secret. 
Mademoiselle Caumartin conceived for me a passion — a 
caprice — which was very flattering for a time, but which 
latterly became very troublesome. Figure to yourself — she 
daily came to our house while I was lying ill, and with the 
greatest difficulty my mother got her . out of it. That was 
not all. She pestered me with letters containing all sorts of 
threats- — nay, actually kept watch at the house ; and one day 
when I entered the carriage with my mother and Signora 
Venosta for a drive in the Bois (meaning to call for Isaura 
by the way), she darted to the carriage-door, caught my 
hand, and would have made a scene if the coachman had, 
given her leave to do so. Luckily he had the tact to whip on 
his horses, and we escaped. I had some little difficulty in 
convincing Signora Yenosta that the girl was crazed. But 
I felt the danger I incurred of her coming upon me some 
moment when in company with Isaura, and so I left my 
father’s house ; and naturally wishing to steer clear of this 
vehement little demon till I am safely married, I keep my 
address a secret from all who are likely to tell her of it.” 

“ You do wisely if you are really afraid of her and cannot 
trust your nerves to say to her plainly, ‘ I am engaged to be 
married ; all is at an end between us. Do not force me to 
employ the police to protect myself from unwelcome importu-, 
nities.’ ” 

“ Honestly speaking, I doubt if I have the nerve to do that, 
and I doubt still more if it would be of any avail. It is very. 
ennuyant to be so passionately loved ; but, que voulez-mm f 
It is my fate.” 


48 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Poor martyr ! I condole with you : and, to say truth, it 
was chiefly to warn you of Mademoiselle Caumartin’s perti- 
nacity that I call this evening.” 

Here Savarin related the particulars of his rencontre with 
Julie, and concluded by saying: “ I suppose I may take your 
word of honor that you will firmly resist all temptation 
to renew a connection which would be so incompatible with 
the respect due to jiancie? Fatherless and protec- 
torless as Isaura is, I feel bound to act as a virtual guardian 
to one in whom my wife takes so deep an interest, and to 
whom, as she thinks, she had some hand in bringing about 
your engagement: she is committed to no small respon- 
sibilities. Do not allow poor Julie, whom I sincerely pity, 
to force on me the unpleasant duty of warning your fiancee 
of the dangers to which she might be subjected by mar- 
riage with an Adonis whose fate it is to be so profoundly 
beloved by the ■ sex in general, and by ballet nymphs in par- 
ticular.” 

“ There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty being in- 
cumbent on you, M. Savarin. Of course, what I myself have 
told you in confidence is sacred.” 

“ Certainly. There are things in the life of a gargon before 
marriage which would be an affront to the modesty of his 
fiancee to communicate and discuss. But then those things 
must belong exclusively to the past, and cast no shadow over 
the future. I will not interrupt you further. No doubt 
you have work for the night before you. Do the Bed jour- 
nalists for whom you write pay enough to support you in these 
terribly dear times ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


49 


“ Scarcely. But I look forward to wealth and fame in the 
future. And you?” 

“ I just escape starvation. If the siege last much longer, it 
is not of the gout I shall die. Good-night to you.” 


CHAPTEB XVI. 

IsAURA had, as we have seen, been hitherto saved by the' 
siege and its consequences from the fulfillment of her engage* 
ment to Gustave Bameau ; and since he had quitted his 
father’s house she had not only seen less of him, hut a certain 
chill crept into his converse in the visits he paid to her. The 
'compassionate feeling his illness had excited, confirmed by 
the unwonted gentleness of his mood and the short-lived 
remorse with which he spoke of his past faults and follies, 
necessarily faded away in proportion as he regained that kind 
of febrile strength which was his normal state of health, and 
with it the arrogant self-assertion which was ingrained in his 
character. But it was now more than ever that she became 
aware of the antagonism between all that constituted his inner 
life and her own. It was not that he volunteered in her 
presence the express utterance of those opinions, social or 
religious, which he addressed to the public in the truculent 
journal to which, under a nom de plume, he was the most 
inflammatory contributor. Whether it was that he shrank 
from insulting the ears of the pure virgin whom he had wooed 
VoL. III.— c 4 


50 


THE PARISIANS. 


as wife with avowals of his disdain of marriage bonds, or per- 
haps from shocking yet more her womanly humanity and her 
religious faith by cries for the blood of anti-republican traitors 
and the downfall of Christian altars ; or whether he yet clung, 
though with relapsing affection, to the hold which her promise 
had imposed on him, and felt that that hold would be forever 
gone, and that she would recoil from his side in terror and 
dismay, if she once learned that the man who had implored 
her to be his saving angel from the comparatively mild errors 
of youth, had so belied his assurance, so mocked her credulity, 
as deliberately to enter into active warfare against all that he 
knew her sentiments regarded as noble and her conscience 
received as divine: despite the suppression of avowed doc- 
trine on his part, the total want of sympathy between these 
antagonistic natures made itself felt by both — more promptly 
felt by Isaura. If Gustave did not frankly announce to her 
in that terrible time (when all that a little later broke out on 
the side of the Communists was more or less forcing ominous 
way to the lips of those who talked with confidence to each 
other, whether to approve or to condemn) the associates with 
whom he was leagued, the path to which he had committed 
his career, — still for her instincts for genuine Aft — which for 
its development needs the serenity of peace, which for its 
ideal needs dreams that soar into the Infinite — Gustave had 
only the scornful sneer of the man who identifies with his 
ambition the violent upset of all that civilization has estab- 
lished in this world, and the blank negation of all that patient 
hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into 
the next. 


THE PARISIANS. 


51 


On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without cer- 
tain fine and delicate attributes in a complicated nature over 
which the personal vanity and the mobile temperament of the 
Parisian reigned supreme, chafed at the restraints imposed on 
him. No matter what a man’s doctrines may be — however 
abominable you and I may deem them — man desires to find 
in the dearest fellowship he can establish, that sympathy 
in the woman his choice singles out from her sex — deference 
to his opinions, sympathy with his objects, as man. So, too, 
Gustave’s sense of honor — and according to his own Parisian 
code that sense was keen — ^became exquisitely stung by the 
thought that he was compelled to play the part of a mean 
dissimulator to the girl for whose opinions he had the pro- 
foundest contempt. How could these two, betrothed to each 
other, not feel, though without coming to open dissension, 
that between them had flowed the inlet of water by which 
they had been riven asunder ? What man, if he can imagine 
himself a Gustave Rameau, can blame the revolutionist ab- 
sorbed in ambitious projects for turning the pyramid of society 
topsy-turvy, if he shrank more and more from the companion- 
ship of a betrothed with whom he could not venture to ex- 
change three words without caution and reserve ? And what 
woman can blame an Isaura if she felt a sensation of relief at 
the very neglect of the affianced whom she had compassion- 
ated and could never love ? 

Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura’s 
mind at this time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect 
fragmentary journal, in which, amid saddened and lonely 
hours, she held converse with herself: 


52 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Oac day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation 
between M. Savarin and the En2:lisliman, who sought to ex- 
plain the conception of duty in which the German poet has 
given such noble utterance to the thoughts of the German 
philosopher — viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal as 
the artistic, — the attainment to the calm delight wherein the 
pain of elfort disappears in the content of achievement. Thus 
in life, as in art, it is through discipline that we arrive at 
freedom, and duty only completes itself when all motives, all 
actions, are attuned into one harmonious whole, and it is not 
striven for as duty, but enjoyed as happiness. M. Savarin 
treated this theory with the mockery with which the French 
wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism. 
According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult 
struggle ; and he said laughingly, ‘ Whenever a man says, 
“ I have done my duty,” it is with a long face and a mournful 
sigh.’ 

“ Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman ! how 
harshly the Frenchman’s irony jarred upon my ears ! And 
yet now, in the duty that life imposes on me, to fulfill which 
I strain every power vouchsafed to my nature, and seek to 
crush down every impulse that rebels, where is the promised 
calm, where any approach to the -content of achievement? 
Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art 
has vanished. I see but cloud and desert. Can this which 
I assume to be duty really be so ? Ah, is it not sin even to 
ask my heart that question ? 

* ****:}«:(: 

“ Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his 
neglect both of his parents and of me. I have had to take 
his part against her. I would not have him lose their love. 
Poor Gustave ! But when Madame Rameau suddenly said 
to-day, ‘ I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gus- 
tave. Retract thy promise ; in doing so thou wilt be justified,’ 


THE PARISIANS. 


53 


— oh, the strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke ! Am 
I justified? Am I? Oh, if that Englishman had never 
crossed my path ! Oh, if I had never loved ! or if in the 
last time we met he had not asked for my love and confessed 
his own ! Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my con- 
science with my longings, and say to Gustave, ‘We do not 
suit each other ; be we both released !’ But now — is it that 
Gustave is really changed from what he was when, in despond- 
ence at my own lot, and in pitying belief that I might brighten 
and exalt his, I plighted my troth to him ? or is it not rather 
that the choice I thus voluntarily made became so intolerable 
a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and sought by 
another, and from that moment I lost the strength I had 
before, — strength to silence the voice at my own heart ? What 1 
is it the image of that other one which is persuading me to 
be false ? — to exaggerate the failings, to be blind to the 
merits, of him who has a right to say, ‘ I am what I was 
when thou didst pledge thyself to take me for better or for 
worse’ ? 

“ Gustave has been here, after an absence of several days. 
He was not alone. The good Abbe Vertpre and Madame de 
Vandemar, with her son M. liaoul, were present. They had 
come on matters connected with our ambulance. They do 
not know of my engagement to Gustave ; and, seeing him in 
the uniform of a National Guard, the Abbe courteously ad- 
dressed to him some questions as to the possibility of checking 
the terrible increase of the vice of intoxication, so alien till 
of late to the habits of the Parisians, and becoming fatal to 
discipline and bodily endurance: could the number of the 
caiitines on the ramparts be more limited ? Gustave answered 
with rudeness and bitter sarcasm, ‘ Before priests could be 
critics in military matters, they must undertake military 
service themselves.’ 


54 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ The Abb^ replied with unalterable good humor, ‘ But, in 
order to criticise the effects of drunkenness, must one get 
drunk one’s self?’ Gustave was put out, and retired into a 
corner of the room, keeping sullen silence till my other 
visitors left. 

‘‘ Then, before I could myself express the pain his words 
and manner had given me, he said abruptly, ‘ I wonder how 
you can tolerate the tarhiferie which may amuse on the comic 
stage, but in the tragedy of these times is revolting.’ This 
speech roused my anger, and the conversation that ensued 
was the gravest that had ever passed between us. 

“ If Gustave were of stronger nature and more concentrated 
will, I believe that the only feelings I should have for him 
would be antipathy and dread. But it is his very weaknesses 
and inconsistencies that secure to him a certain tenderness of 
interest. I think he could never be judged without great 
indulgence by women ; there is in him so much of the child, 
— wayward, irritating at one moment, and the next penitent, 
affectionate. One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible 
to one so delicate both in mind and form. That peculiar 
order of genius to which he belongs seems as if it ought to 
be so estranged from all directions violent or coarse. AVhen 
in poetry he seeks to utter some audacious and defying senti- 
ment, the substance melts away in daintiness of expression, 
in soft, lute-like strains of slender music. And when he has 
stung, angered, revolted my heart the most, suddenly he sub- 
sides into such pathetic gentleness, such tearful remorse, that 
I feel as if resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one 
who must fall without the support of a friendly hand, were a 
selfish cruelty. It seems to me as if I were dragged towards 
a precipice by a sickly child clinging to my robe. 

“ But in this last conversation with him his language in 
regard to subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me 
vords which startled him, and which may avail to save him 


the PARISIANS. 


55 


from that worst insanity of human minds, — the mimicry of 
the Titans who would have dethroned a God to restore a 
Chaos. I told him frankly that I had only promised to share 
his fate on my faith in his assurance of my power to guide 
it heavenward, and that if the opinions he announced were 
seriously entertained, and put forth in defiance of Heaven 
itself, we were separated forever. I told him how earnestly, 
in the calamities of the time, my own soul had sought to take 
refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond the earth, and how 
deeply many a sentiment that in former days passed by me 
with a smile in the light talk of the salons now shocked me ^ 
as an outrage on the reverence which the mortal child owes 
to the Divine Father. I owned to him how much of comfort, 
of sustainment, of thought and aspiration, elevated bej’^ond the 
sphere of Art in which I had hitherto sought the purest air, 
the loftiest goal, I owed to intercourse with minds like those 
of the Abbe Vertpr4 ; and how painfully I felt as if I were 
guilty of ingratitude when he compelled me to listen to insults 
on those whom I recognized as benefactors. 

“ I wished to speak sternly ; but it is my great misfortune, 
my prevalent weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought 
to be. It is with me in life as in Art. I never could on the 
stage have taken the part of a Norma or a Medea. If I at- 
tempt in fiction a character which deserves condemnation, I 
am untrue to poetic justice. I cannot condemn and execute ; 

I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself 
have created. I was never in the real world stern but to one ; 
and then, alas! it was because I loved where I could no 
longer love with honor*, and I, knowing my weakness, had 
terror lest I should yield. 

“ So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my 
manner, how gravely I was in earnest. But, himself soft- 
ened, afieeted to tears, he confessed his own faults — ceased to 
argue, in order to praise j and — and — uttering protestations 


56 


THE PARISIANS. 


seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him still — 
bound to him still — woe is me !” 

It is true that Isaura had come more directly under the 
influence of religion than she had been in the earlier dates 
of this narrative. There is a time in the lives of most of us, 
and especially in the lives of women, when, despondent of all 
joy in an earthly future, and tortured by conflicts between 
inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and fervor 
of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine 
Love; seeking to rebaptize ourselves in the fountain of its 
mercy, taking thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only 
strength that can sustain us. Such a time had come to 
Isaura. Formerly she had escaped from the griefs of the 
work-day world into the garden-land of Art. Now, Art had 
grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell 
from the garden-land ; its flowers were faded, its paths were 
stony, its sunshine had vanished in mist and rain. There are 
two voices of Nature in the soul of the genuine artist, — that 
is, of him who, because he can create, comprehends the neces 
sity of the great Creator. Those voices are never both silent. 
When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly audible. 
The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Keligion. 

At that period several societies for the relief and tendance 
of the wounded had been formed by the women of Paris, — 

the earliest, if I mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank 

among whom were the Comtesse de Vandemar and the Con- 
tcssa di Eimini — though it necessarily included others of 
station less elevated. To this society, at the request of Alain 


THE PARISIANS. 


57 


de Rocliebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura bad eagerly at 
tacbed berself. • It occupied much of ber time ; and in con- 
nection with it sbe was brought much into sympathetic 
acquaintance with Raoul de Yandemar — the most zealous and 
active member of that society of St. Frangois de Sales, to 
which belonged other young nobles of the Legitimist creed. 
The passion of Raoul’s life was the relief of human suffering. 
In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity. I think 
all, or most of us, have known what it is to pass under the 
influence of a nature that is so far akin to ours that it de- 
sires to become something better and higher than it is — that 
desire being paramount in ourselves — but seeks to be that 
something in ways not akin to, but remote from, the ways in 
which we seek it. When this contact happens, either one 
nature, by the mere force of will, subjugates and absorbs the 
other, or both, while preserving their own individuality, apart 
and independent, enrich themselves by mutual interchange; 
and the asperities which differences of taste and sentiment in 
detail might otherwise provoke melt in the sympathy which 
unites spirits striving with equal earnestness to rise nearer 
to the unseen and unattainable Source, which they equally 
recognize as Divine. , ; 

Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the 
ordinary intercourse of the world, neither would have de- 
tected the sympathy of which I speak. Raoul was not with- 
out the prejudices against artists and writers of romance, that 
are shared by many who cherish the persuasion that all is 
vanity which does not concentrate imagination and intellect 
in the destinies of the soul hereafter ; and Isaura might have 
c* 


58 


THE PARISIANS. 


excited his compassion, certainly not his reverence : while to 
her, his views on all that seeks to render the actual life at- 
tractive and embellished, through the accomplishments of 
Muse and Grace, would have seemed the narrow-minded 
asceticism of a bigot. But now, amid the direful calamities 
of the time, the beauty of both natures became visible to 
each. To the eyes of Isaura, tenderness became predominant 
m the monastic self-denial of Baoul. To the eyes of Baoul, 
devotion became predominant in the gentle thoughtfulness 
of Isaura. Their intercourse was in ambulance and hospital 
— in care for the wounded, in prayer for the dying. Ah ! it 
is easy to 'declaim against the frivolities and vices of Parisian 
society as it appears on the surface; and in revolutionary 
times it is the very worst of Paris that ascends in scum to 
the top. But descend below the surface, even in that de- 
moralizing suspense of order, and nowhere on earth might the 
angel have beheld the image of humanity more amply vindi- 
cating its claim to the heritage of heaven. 


CHAPTEB XVII. 

The warning announcement of some great effort on the 
part of the besieged, which Alain had given to Lemercier, 
was soon to be fulfilled. 

For some days the principal thoroughfares were ominously 
lined with military convois. The loungers on the Boulevards 
stopped to gaze on the long defiles of troops and cannon, com- 


THE PARISIANS. 


59 


missariat conveyances, and, saddening accompaniments ! the 
vehicles of various ambulances for the removal of the wounded. 
With what glee the loungers said to each other, “ Enjin ^ 
Among all the troops that Paris sent forth, none were so 
popular as those which Paris had not nurtured — the sailors. 
From the moment they arrived, the sailors had been the pets 
of the capital. They soon proved themselves the most notable 
contrast to that force which Paris herself had produced — the 
National Guard. Their frames were hardy, their habits active, 
their discipline perfect, their manners mild and polite. “ Oh, 
if all our troops were like these !’ ’ was the common exclama- 
tion of the Parisians. 

At last burst forth upon Paris the proclamations of Gen- 
eral Trochu and General Ducrot ; the first brief, calm', and 
Breton-like, ending with “ Putting our trust in God. March 
on for our country the second more detailed, more candidly 
stating obstacles and difficulties, but fiery with eloquent en- 
thusiasm, not unsupported by military statistics, in the four 
hundred cannon, two-thirds of which were of the largest 
calibre, that no material object could resist; more than one 
hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, all well armed, well 
equipped, abundantly provided with munitions, and all (y’ew 
a Ves'poir) animated by an irresistible ardor. “ For me,” 
concludes the General, “ I am resolved. I swear before you, 
before the whole nation, that I will not re-enter Paris except 
as dead or victorious.” 

At these proclamations, who then at Paris does not recall 
the burst of enthusiasm that stirred the surface ? Trochu 
became once more popular ; even the Communistic or atheistic 


60 


THE PARISIANS. 


journals refrained from complaining that he attended mass 
and invited his countrymen to trust in a God. Ducrot was 
more than popular — he was adored. 

The several companies in which De Maul^on and Enguer- 
rand served departed towards their post early on the same 
morning, that of the 28th. All the previous night, while 
Enguerrand was buried in profound slumber, Kaoul remained 
in his brother’s room, sometimes on his knees before the 
ivory crucifix which had been their mother’s last birthday 
gift to her youngest son — sometimes seated beside the bed 
in profound and devout meditation. At daybreak, Madame 
de Yandemar stole into the chamber. Unconscious of his 
brother’s watch, he had asked her to wake him in good time, 
for the young man was a sound sleeper. Shading the candle 
she bore with one hand, with the other she drew aside the 
curtain and looked at Enguerrand’ s calm, fair face, its lips 
parted in the happy smile which seemed to carry joy with it 
wherever its sunshine played. Her tears fell noiselessly on 
her darling’s cheek ; she then knelt down and prayed for 
strength. As she rose, she felt Raoul’s arm around her ; 
they looked at each other in silence ; then she bowed her 
head, and wakened Enguerrand with her lips. “ Pas de 
querelle, mes amts,'' he murmured, opening his sweet blue 
eyes drowsily. “ Ah, it was a dream ! I thought Jules and 
Emile [two young friends of his] were worrying each other ; 
and you know, dear Raoul, that I am the most officious of 
peacemakers. Time to rise, is it ? No peacemaking to-day. 
Kiss me again, mother, and say, ‘ Bless thee.’ ” 

“Bless thee, bless thee, my child,” cried the mother, 


THE PARISIANS. 


61 


wrapping her arms passionately round him, and in tones 
choked with sobs. 

“ Now leave me, maman^^ slid Enguerrand, resorting to 
tlie infantine ordinary name, which he had not used for 
years. “ Raoul, stay and help me dress. I must be tr^s-heon 
to-day. I shall join thee at breakfast, maman. Early for 
such repast, but Vappetit vient en mangeant. Mind the 
coffee is hot.” 

Enguerrand, always careful of each detail of dress, was 
especially so that morning, and especially gay, humming the 
old air, “Partant pour la Syrie.” But his gayety was 
checked when Raoul, taking from his breast a holy, talisman 
which he habitually wore there, suspended it with loving 
hands round his brother’s neck. It was a small crystal set 
in Byzantine filigree ; imbedded in it was a small splinter of 
wood, said, by pious tradition, to be a relic of the Divine 
Cross. It had been for centuries in the family of the Con- 
tessa di Rimini, and was given by her to Raoul, the only gift 
she had ever made him, as an emblem of the sinless purity 
of the affection that united those two souls in the bonds of 
the beautiful belief. 

“ She bade me transfer it to thee to-day, my brother,” said 
Raoul, simply ; “ and now without a pang I can gird on thee 
thy soldier’s sword.” 

Enguerrand clasped his brother in his arms, and kissed 
him with passionate fervor. “Oh, Raoul ! how I love thee ! 
how good thou hast ever been to me ! how many sins thou 
hast saved me from ! how indulgent thou hast been to those 


62 


THE PARISIANS. 


from whicli thou couldst not save ! Think on that, my 
brother, in case we do not meet again on earth.” 

“ Hush, hush, Enguerrand ! No gloomy forebodings now ! 
Come, come hither, my half of life, my sunny half of life !” 
and, uttering these words, he led Enguerrand towards the 
crucifix, and there, in deeper and more solemn voice, said, 
“ Let us pray.” So the brothers knelt side by side, and 
Raoul prayed aloud as only such souls can pray. 

When they descended into the salon where breakfast was 
set out, they found assembled several of their relations, and 
some of Enguerrand’s young friends not engaged in the 
sortie. One or two of the latter, indeed, were disabled from 
fighting by wounds in former fields ; they left their sick-beds 
to bid him good-by. Unspeakable was the affection this 
genial nature inspired in all who came into the circle of its 
winning magic; and when, tearing himself from them, he 
descended the stair, and passed with light step through the 
porte-cochlre^ there was a crowd around the house — so widely 
had his popularity spread among even the lower classes, from 
which the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly composed. 
He departed to the place of rendezvous amid a chorus of 
exhilarating cheers. 

Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordially greeted, 
was that equal idol of a former generation, Victor de Mau- 
14on. No pious friend prayed beside his couch, no loving 
kiss waked^ him from his slumbers. At the gray of the 
November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling 
dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which 
cannot even go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact 


THE I' A R 1 S I A N S. 


63 


moment in which sleep shall end. He, too, like Enguerrand, 
dressed himself with care — unlike Enguerrand, with care 
strictly soldier-like. Then, seeing he had some little time yet 
before him, he rapidly revisited pigeon-holes and drawers, in 
which might be found by prying eyes anything he would 
deny to their curiosity. All that he found of this sort were 
some letters in female handwriting, tied together with faded 
ribbon, relics of earlier days, and treasured throughout later 
vicissitudes ; letters from the English girl to whom he had 
briefly referred in his confession to Louvier, — the only girl 
he had ever wooed as his wife. She was the only daughter 
of high-born Roman Catholics, residing at the time of his 
youth in Paris. Reluctantly they had assented to his pro- 
posals; joyfully they had retracted their assent when his 
affairs had become so involved : yet possibly the motive that 
led him to his most ruinous excesses — the gambling of the 
turf — had been caused by the wild hope of a nature then 
fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune that might suffice to 
satisfy the parents. But during his permitted courtship the 
lovers had corresponded. Her letters were full of warm, if 
innocentj tenderness — ^till' came the last cold farewell. The 
family had long ago returned to England ; he concluded, of 
course, that she had married another. 

Near to these letters lay the papers which had served to 
vindicate his honor in that old affair in which the unsought 
love of another had brought on him shame and affliction. As 
his eye fell on the last, he muttered to himself, “ I kept these^ ^ 
to clear my repute. Can I keep those^ when, if found, they 
might compromise the repute of her who might have been 


64 


THE PARISIANS. 


my wife had I been worthy of her ? She is doubtless now 
another’s ; or, if dead, — honor never dies.” He pressed his 
lips to the letters with a passionate, lingering, mournful kiss ; 
then, raking up the ashes of yesterday’s fire, and rekindling 
them, he placed thereon those leaves of a melancholy romance 
in his past, and watched them, slowly, reluctantly, smoulder 
away into tinder. Then he opened a drawer in which lay 
the only paper -of a political character which he had pre- 
served. All that related to plots or conspiracies in which his 
agency had committed others, it was his habit to destroy as 
soon as received. For the sole document thus treasured he 
alone was responsible; it was an outline of his ideal for the 
future constitution of France, accompanied with elaborate 
arguments, the heads of which his conversation with the 
Incognito made known to the reader. Of the soundness 
of this political programme, whatever its merits or faults 
(a question on which I presume no judgment), he had an 
intense conviction. He glanced rapidly over its contents, 
did not alter a word, sealed it up in an envelope, inscribed, 
“ My Legacy to my Countrymen.” The papers refuting a 
calumny relating solely to himself he carried into the battle- 
field, placed next to his heart, — significant of a Frenchman’s 
love of honor in this world — as the relic placed round the 
neck of Enguerrand by his pious brother was emblematic of 
the Christian hope of mercy in the next. 


THE PARISIANS. 


65 


CHAPTER XVIIL 

The streets swarmed with the populace gazing on the 
troops as they passed to their destination. Among those 
of the Mobiles who especially caught the eye were two com- 
panies in which Enguerrand de Yandemar and Victor de 
Maul4on commanded. In the first were many young men 
of good family, or in the higher ranks of the bourgeoisie^ 
known to numerous lookers-on ; there was something in- 
spiriting in their gay aspects and in the easy carelessness of 
their march. Mixed with this company, however, and form- 
ing of course the bulk of it, were those who belonged to the 
lower classes of the population ; and though they too might 
seem gay to an ordinary observer, the gayety was forced. 
Many of them were evidently not quite sober ; and there was 
a disorderly want of soldiership in their mien and armament 
which inspired distrust among such vieux moustacJies as, too 
old for other service than that of the ramparts, mixed here 
and there among the crowd. 

But when De Mauleon’s company passed, the vieux mous- 
tacJies impulsively touched each other; They recognized 
the march of well-drilled men, the countenances grave and 
severe, the eyes not looking on this side and that for admira- 
tion, the step regularly timed ; and conspicuous among these 
men the tall stature and calm front of the leader. 

VoL. III. 6 


66 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Thesi) fellows will fight well,” growled a vienjx Tnovstache : 
“ where did they fish out their leader?” 

“ Don’t you know?” said a bourgeois. ‘‘Victor de Mauleon. 
He won the cross in Algeria for bravery. I recollect him 
when I was very young* the very devil for women and 
fighting.” 

“ I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer 
for women,” growled again le mevux, moustache. 

One incessant roar of cannon all the night of the 29th. 
The populace had learned the names of the French cannons, 
and fancied they could distinguish the several sounds of their 
thunder. “ There spits ‘ Josephine !’ ” shouts an invalid 
sailor. “ There howls our own ‘ Populace !’ ”* cries a Red 
Republican from Belleville. “ There sings ‘ Le Chatiment !’ ” 
laughed Gustave Rameau, who was now become an enthu- 
siastic admirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected to 
despise And all the while, mingled with the roar of the 
cannon, came, far and near, from the streets, from the ram- 
parts, the gusts of song — song sometimes heroic, sometimes 
obscene, more often carelessly joyous. The news of General 
Vinoy’s success during the early part of the day had- been 
damped by the evening report of Ducrot’s delay in crossing 
the swollen Marne. But the spirits of the Parisians rallied 
from a momentary depression on the excitement at night of 
that concert of martial music. 

During that night, close under the guns of the double 


♦ The ‘‘ Populace” had been contributed to the artillery, sou d sou, by 
the working-clas-. 


THE PARISIANS. 


67 


redoubt of Gravelle and La Faisanderie, eight pontoon-bridges 
were thrown over the Marne ; and at daybreak the first column 
of the third army under Blanchard and Benoult crossed with 
all their artillery, and, covered by the fire of the double re- 
doubts, of the forts of Vincennes, Nogent, Bossney, and the 
batteries of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon carried the 
village of Champigny and the first ichehn of the important 
plateau of Villiers, and were already commencing the work 
of intrenchment, when, rallying from the amaze of a defeat, 
the German forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh bat- 
teries. The Prussian pieces of artillery established at Chen- 
nevi^res and at Neuilly opened fire with deadly execution ; 
while a numerous infantry, descending from the intrench- 
ments of Villiers, charged upon the troops under Benoult. 
Among the French in that strife were Enguerrand and the 
Mobiles of which he was in command. Dismayed by the un- 
expected fire, these Mobiles gave way, as indeed did many of 
the line. Enguerrand rushed forward to the front — “ On, 
mes enfans^ on ! What will our mothers and wives say of us 
if we fly ? Vive la France ! — On !” Among those of the 
better class in that company there rose a shout of applause, 
but it found no sympathy among the rest. They wavered, 
they turned. “Will you sufier me to go on alone, country- 
men ?” cried Enguerrand ; and alone he rushed on towards 
the Prussian line, — rushed, and fell, mortally wounded by a 
musket-ball. “Bevenge! revenge!” shouted some of the 
foremost ; “ Bevenge !” shouted those in the rear ; and, so 
shouting, turned on their heels and fled. But ere they could 
disperse they encountered the march, steadfast though rapid, 


68 


THE PARISIANS. 


of the troop led by Victor de Mauleon. “ Poltroons !” 
he thundered, with the sonorous depth of his strong Voice, 
“halt and turn, or my men shall fire on you as deserters.” 

“ Va, citoyen^'' said one fugitive, an officer, — popularly 
elected, because he was the loudest brawler in the club of the 
Salle Favre, — we have seen him before — Charles, the brother 
of Armand Monnier; — “men can’t fight when they despise 
their generals. It is our generals who are poltroons and fools 
both.” 

“ Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards,” cried De 
Mauleon, and shot the man dead. 

His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and by the 
voice and the look of the death-giver, halted. The officers, 
who had at first yielded to the panic of their men, took fresh 
courage, and finally led the bulk of the troop back to their 
post, “ enlevh d la halonettej'' to use the phrase of a candid 
historian of that day. 

Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. It was the 
first, if it was the last, really important success of the be- 
sieged. They remained masters of the ground, the Prussians 
leaving to them the wounded and the dead. 

That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of 
the Montmartre heights, from the observatory on which the 
celebrated inventor Bazin had lighted up, with some magical 
electric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers from Mont 
Yal^rien to the Fort de la Briche ! The splendor of the 
blaze wrapped the great city ; — distinctly above the roofs of 
the houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of N6f re 
Dame, the giant turrets of the Tuileries ; — and died away on 


THE PARISIANS. 


69 


resting on the infames sca,pulos Acroceraunia^ the “ thunder 
crags” of the heights occupied by the invading army. 

Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Bameau — who, despite 
his peaceful habits and gray hairs, insisted on joining in the 
aid of la patrie — were among the National Guards attached 
to the Fort de la Briche and the neighboring eminence, and 
they met in conversation. 

“ What a victory we have had !” said the old Bameau. 

“ Bather mortifying to your son, M. Bameau,” said Le- 
mercier. 

“ Mortifying to my son, sir ! — the victory of his country- 
men. What do you mean ?” 

“ I had the honor to hear M. Gustave the other night at 
the club de la Vengeance^ 

Bon Dieu! do you frequent those tragic reunions?” 
asked De Brez4. 

“ They are not at all tragic : they are the only comedies 
left us, as one must amuse one’s self somewhere, and the club 
de la Vengeance is the prettiest thing of the sort going. I 
quite understand why it should fascinate a poet like your son, 
M. Bameau. It is held in a salle de cafe chantant — style 
Louis Quinze — decorated with a pastoral scene from Watteau. 
I and my dog Fox drop in. We hear your son haranguing. 
In what poetical sentences he despaired of the republic ! The 
government (he called them les charlatans de T Hotel de Yille) 
were imbeciles. They pretended to inaugurate a revolution, 
and did not employ the' most obvious of revolutionary means. 
There Fox and I pricked up our ears : what were those 
means? Your son proceeded to explain : ‘ All mankind were 


70 


THE PARISIANS. 


to be appealed to against individual interests. The commerce 
of luxury was to be abolished: clearly luxury was not at the 
command of all mankind. Cafes and theatres were to be 
closed forever — all mankind could not go to cafes and thea- 
tres. It was idle to expect the masses to combine for any- 
thing* in which the masses had not an interest in common. 
The masses had no interest in any property that did not 
belong to the masses. Programmes of the society to be 
founded, called the Ligiie Cosmopolite Democratique^ should 
be sent at once into all the States of the civilized world—- 
how ? by balloons. Money corrupts the world as now com- 
posed ; but the money at the command of the masses could 
buy all the monarchs and courtiers and priests of the uni- 
verse.’ At that sentiment, vehemently delivered, the applauses 
were frantic, and Fox in his excitement began to bark. At 
the sound of his bark one man cried out, ‘ That’s a Prussian !’ 
another, ‘ Down with the spy I’ another, ‘ There’s an aristo' 
present — he keeps alive a dog which would be a week’s meal 
for a family !’ I snatch up Fox at the last cry, and clasp 
him to a bosom protected by the uniform of the National 
Guard. 

“ When the hubbub had subsided, your son, M. Rameau, 
proceeded, quitting mankind in general, and arriving at the 
question in particular most interesting to his audience— the 
mobilization of the National Guard; that is, the call upon 
men who like talking and hate fighting to talk less and fight 
more. ‘ It was the sheerest tyranny to select a certain number 
of free citizens to be butchered. If the fight was for the 
mass, there ought to be la levie en masse. If one did not 


THE PARISIANS. 


71 


compel everybody to fight, why should anybody fight ?’ Here 
the applause again became vehement, and Fox again became 
indiscreet. I subdued Fox’s bark into a squeak by pulling 
his ears. ‘ What !’ cries your poet-son, ‘ la levee en masse 
gives us fifteen millions of soldiers, with which we could 
crush, not Prussia alone, but the whole of Europe. (Immense 
sensation.) Let us, then, resolve that the charlatans of the 
Hotel de Ville are incapable of delivering us from the 
Prussians ; that they are deposed ; that the Idgue of the 
Dcmocratie Cosmopolite is installed ; that meanwhile the 
Commune shall be voted the Provisional Government, and 
shall order the Prussians to retire within three days from the 
soil of Paris.’ 

“ Pardon me this long description, my dear M. Rameau ; 
but I trust I have satisfactorily explained why victory ob- 
tained in the teeth of his eloquent opinions, if gratifying to 
him as a Frenchman, must be mortifying to him as a poli- 
tician.” 

The old Rameau sighed, hung his head, and crept away. 

While, amid this holiday illumination, the Parisians enjoyed 
the panorama before them, the Freres Chretiens and the at- 
tendants of the various ambulances were moving along the 
battle-plains ; the first in their large-brimmed hats and sable 
garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many of them in 
glittering uniform — all alike in their serene indifierence to 
danger ; often pausing to pick up among the dead .their own 
brethren who had been slaughtered in the midst of their task. 
Now and then they came on sinister forms apparently engaged 
in the same duty of attending the wounded and dead, but in 


72 


THE PARISIANS. 


tnith murderous plunderers, to whom the dead and the dying 
were equal harvests. Did the wounded man attempt to resist 
the foul hands searching for their spoil, they added another 
wound more immediately mortal, grinning as they completed 
on the dead the robbery they had commenced on the dying. 

Raoul de Vandemar had been all the earlier part of the day 
with the assistants of the ambulance over which he presided, 
attached to the battalions of the National Guard in a quarter 
remote from that in which his brother had fought and fallen. 
When those troops, later in the day, were driven from the 
Montmedy plateau, which they had at first carried, Raoul 
repassed towards the plateau at Villiers, on which the dead 
lay thickest. On the way he heard a vague report of the 
panic which had dispersed the Mobiles of whom Enguerrand 
was in command, and of Enguerrand’s vain attempt to in- 
spirit them. But his fate was not known. 

There, at midnight, Raoul is still searching among the 
ghastly heaps and pools of blood, lighted from afar by the 
blaze from the observatory of Montmartre, and more near at 
hand by the bivouac-fires extended along the banks to the 
left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted the 
lanterns of the Frhres Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness 
of a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he 
observed a small sinister figure perched on the breast of some 
wounded soldier, evidently not to succor. He sprang forward 
and seized a hideous-looking urchin, scarcely twelve years old, 
who held in one hand a small crystal locket, set in filigree 
gold, torn from the soldier’s breast, and lifted high in the 
other a long case-knife. At a glance Raoul recognized the 


THE PARISIANS. 


73 


holy relic he had given to Enguerrand, and, flinging the 
precocious murderer to be seized by his assistants, he cast 
himself beside bis brother. Enguerrand still breathed, and 
his languid eyes brightened as he knew the dear familiar 
face. He tried to speak, but his voice failed, and he shook 
his head sadly, but still with a faint smile on his lips. They 
lifted him tenderly, and placed him on a litter. The move- 
ment, gentle as it was, brought back pain, and with the pain 
strength to mutter, “ My mother— I would see her once 
more.” 

As at daybreak the loungers on Montmartre and the ram- 
parts descended into the streets- — most windows in which 
were open, as they had been all night, with anxious female 
faces peering palely down— they saw the conveyances of the 
ambulances coming dismally along, and many an eye turned 
wistfully towards the litter on which lay the idol of the 
pleasure-loving Paris, with the dark bareheaded flgure walk- 
ing beside it, — onwards, onwards, till it reached the Hotel de 
Vandemar, and a woman’s cry was heard at the entrance — 
the mother’s cry, “ My son ! my son I” 

VOL. III.— D,: 



74 


THE PARISIANS. 


{ 


BOOIC 22:11. 

CHAPTEK 1. 

The last book closed with the success of the Parisian 
sortie on the 30th of November, to be followed by the 
terrible engagements, no less honorable to French valor, on 
the 2d of December. There was the sanguine belief that 
deliverance was at hand ; that Trochu would break througk 
the circle of iron and- effect that junction with the army of 
Aurelles de Paladine which would compel the Germans to' 
raise the investment ;■ — belief rudely shaken by Ducrot’s. 
proclamation of the 4th to explain the reerossing of the 
Marne and the abandonment of the positions conquered, but 
not altogether dispelled till Von Moltke’s letter to Trochu on 
the 5th announcing the defeat of the army of the Loire ^n4 
the recapture of Orleans. Even then the Parisians did not 
lose hope of succor ; and even after the desperate and fruit- 
less sortie against Le Bourget on the 21st, it was not without 
witticisms on defeat and predictions of triumph that Winter 
and Famine settled sullenly on the city. 

Our narrative reopens with the last period of the siege. 

It was during these dreadful days, that if the vilest and the 
most hideous aspects of the Parisian population showed them- 
selves at the worst, so all its loveliest, its noblest, its holiest 
characteristics — unnoticed by ordinary observers in the pros- 


THE PARISIANS. 


75 


perous iays of the capital — became conspicuously prominent. 
The higher classes, including the remnant of the old nohless^^ 
had during the whole siege exhibited qualities in noble con- 
trast to those assigned them by the enemies of aristocracy. 
Their sons had been foremost among those soldiers who never 
calumniated a leader, never fled before a foe ; their women 
had been among the most zealous and the most tender nurses 
of the ambulances they had founded and served ; their houses 
had been freely opened, whether to the families exiled from 
the suburbs, or in supplement to the hospitals. The amount 
of relief they afforded unostentatiously, out of means that 
shared the general failure of accustomed resource when the 
famine commenced, would be scarcely credible if stated. Ad- 
mirable, too, were the fortitude and resignation of the genuine 
Parisian bourgeoisie — the thrifty tradesfolk and small rentiers 
— that class in which, to judge of its timidity when opposed to 
a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous virtue. Courage 
became so now — courage to bear hourly increasing privation, 
and to suppress every murmur of suffering that would dis- 
credit their patriotism and invoke “ peace at any price.” It 
^ was on this class that the calamities of the siege now pressed 
tile most heavily. The stagnation of trade, and the stoppage 
of the rents, in which they had invested their savings, re- 
duced many of them to actual want. Those only of their 
number who obtained the pay of one and a half franc a day 
as National Guards, could be sure to escape from starvation. 
But this pay had already begun to demoralize the receivers. 
Scanty for supply of food, it was ample for supply of drink. 
And drunkenness, hitherto rare in that rank of the Parisians, 


76 


THE PARISIANS. 


became a prevalent vice, aggravated in the case of a National 
Guard when it wholly unfitted him for the duties he under- 
took, especially such National Guards as were raised from 
the most turbulent democracy of the working-class. 

But of all that population there were two sectiotis in which' 
the most beautiful elements of our human nature were most 
touchingly manifest — the women and the priesthood, including 
in the latter denomination all the various brotherhoods and 
societies which religion formed and inspired. 

It was on the 27th of December that Frederic Lemercier 
stood gazing wistfully on a military report affixed to a blank 
wall, which stated that “ the enemy, worn out by a resistance 
of over one hundred days,” had commenced the bombard- 
ment. Poor Frederic was sadly altered ; he had escaped the 
Prussian guns, but not the Parisian winter — the severest 
known for twenty years. He was one of the many frozen at 
their posts — brought back to the ambulance with Fox in his 
bosom trying to keep him warm. He had only lately been 
sent forth as convalescent, — ambulances were too crowded to 
retain a patient longer than absolutely needful,— and had 
been hunger-pinched and frost-pinched ever since. The * 
luxurious Frederic had still, somewhere or other, a capital 
yielding above three thousand a year, and of which he could 
not now realize a franc, the title-deeds to various investments 
being in the hands of Duplessis — the most trustworthy of 
friends, ^the most upright of men, but who was in Bretagne 
and could not be got at. And the time had come at Paris 
when you could not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh or a 
daily supply of fuel. And Frederic Lemercier, who had 


THE PARISIANS. 


77 


long since spent the two thousand francs borrowed from Alain 
(not ignobly, but somewhat ostentatiously, in feasting any ac- 
quaintance who wanted a feast), and who had sold to any one 
who could afford to speculate on such dainty luxuries, clocks, 
bronzes, amber-mouthed pipes,— all that had made the envied 
garniture of his bachelor’s apartment, — Frederic Lemercier 
was, so far as concerned the task of keeping body and soul 
together, worse off than any English pauper who can apply to 
the Union.' Of course he might have claimed his half-pay of 
thirty sous as a National Guard. But he little knows the 
true Parisian who imagines a seigneur of the Chaussee 
d’Antin, the oracle of those with whom he lived, and one 
who knew life so well that he had preached prudence to a 
seigneur of the faubourg like Alain de Bochebriant, stooping 
to apply for the wages of thirty sous. Bations were only 
obtained by the wonderful patience of women who had chil- 
dren, to whom they were both saints and martyrs. The 
hours, the weary hours, one had to wait before one could get 
one’s place on the line for the distribution of that atrocious 
black bread defeated men, — defeated most wives if only for 
husbands, — were defied only by mothers and daughters. 
Literally speaking, Lemercier was starving. Alain had been 
badly wounded in the sortie of the 21st, and was laid up in 
an ambulance. Even if he could have been got at, he had 
probably nothing left to bestow upon Lemercier. 

Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombard- 
ment, and, the Parisian gayety, which some French historian 
of the siege calls douce philosophies lingering on him still, he 
said audibly, turning round to any stranger who heard, 


78 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Happiest of mortals that we are ! Under the present gov- 
ernment we are never warned of anything disagreeable that 
can happen ; we are only told of it when it has happened, 
and then as rather pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I 
meet a civil gendarme. ‘ What is that firing ? which of our 
provincial armies is taking Prussia in the rear ?’ ‘ Monsieur,’ 
says the gendarme, ‘ it is the Prussian Krupp guns.’ I look 
at the proclamation, and my fears vanish, — my heart is re- 
lieved. I read that the bombardment is a sure sign that the 
enemy is worn out.” 

Some of the men grouped round Frederic ducked their 
heads in terror; others, who knew that the thunderbolt 
launched from the plateau of Avron would not fall on the 
pavements of Paris, laughed and joked. But in front, with 
no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, stretched, moving 
inch by inch, the female procession towards the bakery in 
which the morsel of bread for their infants was doled out. • 

“ Hist, mon amf,” said a deep voice beside Lemercier. 
“ Look at those women, and do not wound their ears by a 
jest.” 

Lemercier, offended by that rebuke, though too susceptible 
to good emotions not to recognize its justice, tried with feeble 
fingers to turn up his moustache, and to turn a defiant crest 
upon the rebuker. He was rather startled to see the tall 
martial form at his side, and to recognize Victor de IMauleon. 
“Don’t you think, M. Lemercier,” resumed the Vicomte, 
half sadly, “ that these women are worthy of better husbands 
and sons than are commonly found among the soldiers whose 
uniform we wear?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


79 


“ The National Guard ! You ought not to sneer at tliem, 
Vieomte, — you whose troop covered itself with glory on the 
great days of Villiers and Champigny, — you in whose praise 
even the gTumblers of Paris became eloquent, and in whom a 
future Marshal of France is foretold.” 

“ But, alas ! more than half of my poor troop was left on 
the battle-field, or is now wrestling for mangled remains of 
life inf the. ambulances. And the new recruits with whom I 
took the field on the 21st are not likely to cover themselves 
with glory, or insure to their commander the baton of a 
marshal.” 

“ Ay, I heard when I was in the hospital that you had 
publicly shamed some of these recruits, and declared that you 
would rather resign than lead them again to battle.” 

“ True ; and at this moment, for so doing, I am the man 
most hated by the rabble who supplied those recruits.” 

• The men, while thus conversing, had moved slowly on, and 
were now in front of a large ca/e, from the interior of which 
came the sound of loud bravos and clappings of hands. 
Lemercier’s curiosity was excited. “ Foi: what can be that 
applause ?” he said ; “ let us look in and see.” 

The room was thronged. In the distance, on a small raised 
platform, stood a girl dressed in faded theatrical finery, making 
her obeisance to the crowd. 

“ Heavens !” exclaimed Frederic — “can I trust my eyes? 
Surely that is the once superb Julie : has she been dancing 
here?” 

One of the loungers, evidently belonging to the same 
world as Lemercier, overheard the question, and answered 


80 


THE PARISIANS. 


politely : “ No, Monsieur : she has been reciting verses, and 
really declaims very well, considering it is not her vocation. 
She has given us extracts from Victor Hugo and De Musset, 
and crowned all with a patriotic hymn by Gustave Rameau,— 
her old lover, if gossip he true.” 

Meanwhile, De Mauleon, who at first had glanced over the 
scene with his usual air of calm and cold indifference, became 
suddenly struck by the girl’s beautiful face, and gazed on it 
with a look of startled surprise. 

“ Who and what did you say that poor fair creature is, M. 
Lemercier ?” 

“She is a Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, and was a very 
popular coryphee. She has hereditary right to be a good 
dancer, as the daughter of a once more famous ornament 
of the ballet, la belle L4onie— whom you must have seen in 
your young days.” 

“ Of course. Leonie — she married a M. Surville, a silly 
bourgeois gentilhomme^ who earned the hatred of Paris by 
taking her off the stage. So that is her daughter ! I see 
no likeness to her mother- — much handsomer. Why does 
she call herself Gaumartin ?” 

“Oh,” said Frederic, “a melancholy but trite story. Leonie 
was left a widow, and died in want. What could the poor 
young daughter do? She found a rich protector who had 
influence to get her an appointment in the ballet ; and there 
she did as most girls so circumstanced do — appeared under 
an assumed name, which she has since kept.” 

“I understand,” said Victor, compassionately. “Poor 
hing ! she has quitted the platform, and is coming this way 


THE PARISIANS. 


81 


evidently to speak to you. I saw lier eyes brighten as she 
caught sight of your face.” 

Lemercier attempted a languid air of modest self-compla- 
cency as the girl now approached him. “ Bon-jour^ M. 
Frederic ! Ah^ mon Dieu! how thin you have grown I You 
have been ill ?” 

“ The hardships of a military life, Mademoiselle ! Ah for 
the heaux jours and the peace we insisted .on destroying under 
the Empire which we destroyed for listening to us ! But you 
thrive well, I trust. I hav^ seen you better dressed, but 
never in greater beauty.” 

The girl blushed as she replied, “Do you really think as 
you speak ?” 

“I could not speak more sincerely if I lived in the legend- 
ary House of Glass.” 

The girl clutched' his arm, and said, in suppressed tones, 
“ Where is Gustave ?” 

“ Gustave Bameau ? I have no idea. Do you never see 
him now?” 

“Never, — ^perhaps I never shall see him again; but when 
you do meet him, say that Julie owes to him her livelihood. 
An honest livelihood, Monsieur. He taught her to love verses 
—told her hoW to recite them. I am engaged at this cafe , — 
you will find me here the same hour every day, in case — in case. 
— You are good and kind, and will come and tell me that Gus- 
tave is well and happy, even if he forgets me. Au revoir ! 
Stop ; you do look, my poor Frederic, as if — as if — pardon me. 
Monsieur Lemercier, is there anything I can do? Will you 
condescend to borrow from me? I am in funds.” 

VOL. III.— D* 6 


82 


THE PARISIANS. 


Lemercier at that offer was nearly moved to tears. Famished 
though he was, he could not, however, have touched that girl’s 
earnings. 

“ You are an angel of goodness, Mademoiselle ! Ah, how 
I envy Gustave Rameau ! No, I don’t want aid. I am 
always a — rentier'^ 

^^Bien ! and if you see Gustave, you will not forget.” 

“ Rely on me. Come away,” he said to De Maul^on. T 
don’t want to hear that girl repeat the sort of bombast (he 
poets indite nowadays. It is fustian ; and that girl may have 
a brain of feather, but she has a heart of gold.” 

“ True,” said Victor, as they regained the street. “ I over- 
heard what she said to you. What an incomprehensible thing 
is a woman ! how more incomprehensible still is a woman’s 
love ! Ah, pardon me. I must leave you ; I see in the 
procession a poor woman known to me in better days.” 

De Maul^on walked towards the woman he spoke of — one 
of the long procession to the bakery — a child clinging to her 
robe. A pale, grief-worn woman, still young, but with the 
weariness of age on her face, and the shadow of death on her 
child’s. 

“ I think I see Madame Monnier,” said De Mauleon, softly. 

She turned and looked at him drearily. A year ago, she 
would have blushed if addressed by a stranger in a name not 
lawfully hers. 

“Well,” she said, in hollow accents broken by cough, “1 
don’t know you. Monsieur.” 

“Poor woman!” he resumed, walking beside her as she 
moved slowly on, while the eyes of other women in the pro- 


THE PARISIANS. 


83 


<;ession stared at -him hungrily. “And your child looks ill 
too. It is your youngest ?’ ’ 

“ My only one ! The others are in P^re la Chaise. There 
are but few children alive in my street now. God has been 
very merciful, and taken them to himself.” 

De Maul4on recalled the scene of a neat comfortable apart- 
ment, and the healthful happy children at play on the floor. 
The mortality among the little ones, especially in the qnarticr 
occupied by the working-classes, had of late been terrible. 
The want of food, of fuel, the intense severity of the 
weather, had swept them off as by a pestilence. 

“ And Monnier — what of him ? No doubt he is a National 
Ouard, and has his pay ?” 

The woman made no answer, but hung down her head. 
She was stifling a sob. Till then her eyes seemed to have 
exhausted the last source of tears. 

“ He lives still?” continued Victor, pityingly: “he is not 
wounded ?” 

“ No : Tie is well — in health. Thank you kindly. Monsieur.” 

“ But his pay is not enough to help you, and of course he 
can get no work. Excuse me if I stopped you. It is be- 
cause I owed Armand Monnier a little debt for work, and I 
am ashamed to say that it quite escaped my memory in these 
terrible events. Allow me, Madame, to pay it to you.” And 
he thrust his purse into her hand. “ I think this contains 
about the sum I owed ; if more or less, we will settle the 
difference later. Take care of yourself.’^ 

He was turning away, when the woman caught hold of 
him. 


84 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Stay, Monsieur. May Heaven bless you ! — ^but — but— 
tell me what name I am to give to Armand. I can’t think 
of any one who owed him money. It must have been before 
that dreadful strike, the beginning of all our woes. Ah, if 
it were allowed to curse any one, I fear my last breath would 
not be a prayer.” 

“ You would curse the strike, or the master who did not 
forgive Armand’s share in it ?” 

“ No, no, — the cruel man who talked him into it — ^into all 
that has changed the best workman, the kindest heart — the 
— the ” Again her voice died in sobs. 

“ And who was that man?” asked He Mauleon, falteringly. 

“ His name was Lebeau. If you were a poor man, I 
should say, ‘ Shun him.’ ” 

“ I have heard of the name you mention ; but if we mean 
the same person, Monnier cannot have met him lately. He 
has not been in Paris since the siege.” 

“ I suppose not, the coward ! He ruined us — us who were 
so happy before— and then, as Armand says, cast us away as 
instruments he had done with. But— but if you do know 
him, and do see him again, tell him — tell him not to com- 
plete his wrong — not to bring murder on Armand’s soul. 
For Armand isn’t what he was — ^and has become, oh, so 
violent ! I dare not take this money without saying who 
gave it. He would not take money as alms from an aristo- 
crat. Hush ! he beat me for taking money from the good 
Monsieur Baoul de Vandemar — my poor Armand beat me!” 

He Mauleon shuddered. “ Say that it is from a customer 
whose rooms he decorated in his spare hours on his own 


THE PARISIANS. 


85 


account before tbe strike, — Monsieur ’ here he uttered 

indistinctly some unpronounceable name, and hurried olf, soon 
lost as the streets grew darker. Amid groups of a higher 
order of men — military men, nobles, ci-devant deputies — « 
among such ones his name stood very high. Not only his 
bravery in the recent sorties had been signal, but a strong 
belief in his military talents Had become prevalent ; and con- 
joined with the name, he had before established as a political 
writer, and the remembrance of the vigor and sagacity with 
which he had opposed the war, he seemed certain, when peace 
and order became re-established, of a brilliant position and 
career in a future administration, — not less because he had 
steadfastly kept aloof from the existing government, which 
it was rumored, rightly or erroneously, that he had been 
solicited to join, and from every combination of the various 
democratic or discontented factions. 

Quitting these more distinguished associates, he took his 
way alone towards the ramparts. The day was closing ; the 
thunders of the cannon were dying down. 

He passed by a wine-shop round which were gathered many 
of the worst specimens of the Mohlots and National Guards, 
mostly drunk, and loudly talking, in vehement abuse of gen- 
erals and officers and commissariat. By one of the men, as 
he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there was gas 
no longer in the dismal city), he was recognized as the com- 
mander who had dared to insist on discipline and disgrace 
honest patriots who claimed to themselves the sole option 
between fight and flight. The man was one of those patriots 
— one of the new recruits whom Victor had shamed and 


86 


THE PARISIANS. 


dismissed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunken 
plunge at his former chief, shouting “ A has Varisto ! Com- 
rades, this is the coquin He Mauleon who is paid by the 
Prussians for getting us killed : d la lanterne /” “ A la 

lanterne stammered and hiccoughed others of the group ; 
but tliey did not stir to execute their threat. Dimly seen as 
the stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was by 
their drowsied eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man 
without fear of a foe and without ruth for a mutineer, suf- 
ficed to protect him from outrage ; and with a slight move- 
ment of his arm that sent his denouncer reeling against the 
lamp-post, De Mauleon passed on : — when another man, in 
the uniform of a National Guard, bounded from the door of 
the tavern, crying with a loud voice, “ Who said De Mauleon ? 
— let me look on him and Victor, who had strode on with 
slow lion-like steps, cleaving the crowd, turned, and saw before 
him in the gleaming light a face, in which the bold, frank, 
intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a wild, reckless, 
savage expression — the face of Armand Monnier. 

“ Ha ! are you really Victor de Mauleon ?” asked Monnier, 
not fiercely, but under his breath, — in that sort of stage 
whisper which is the natural utterance of excited men 
under the mingled influence of potent drink and hoarded 
rage. 

“ Certainly ; I am Victor de Mauleon.” 

‘‘ And you were in command of the company of the 

National Guard on the 30th of November at Champigny and 
Villiers?” 

“ I was.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


87 


“ And you shot with your own hand an officer belonging 
to another company, who refused to join yours?” 

“ I shot a cowardly soldier who ran away from the enemy 
and seemed a ringleader of other runaways ; and in so doing, 
I saved from dishonor the best part of his comrades.” 

“ The man was no. coward. He was an enlightened French- 
man, and worth fifty of such aristos as you; and he knew 
better than his officers that he was to be led to an idle 
slaughter. Idle — I say idle. What was France the better, 
how was Paris the safer, for the senseless butchery of that 
day? You mutinied against a wiser general than Saint 
Trochu when you murdered that mutineer.” 

“ Armand Monnier, you are not quite sober to-night, or I 
would argue with you that question. But you no doubt are 
brave : how and why do you take the part of a runaway ?” 

“ How and why ? He was my brother, and you own you 
murdered him ; my brother — the sagest head in Paris. If I 
had listened to him, I should not be, — bah ! — no matter now 
what I am.” 

“ I could not know he was your brother ; but if he had 
been mine I would have done the same.” 

Here Victor’s lip quivered, for Monnier griped him by the 
arm, and looked him into the face with wild stony eyes. 

“ I recollect that voice ! Yet — ^yet — ^you say you are a noble, 
a Vicomte — Victor de Mauleon ! and you shot my brother !” 

Here he passed his left hand rapidly over his forehead. 
The fumes of wine still clouded his mind, but rays of intelli- 
gence broke through the cloud. Suddenly he said, in a loud 
and calm and natural voice, — 


88 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Mods, le Vicomte, you accost me as Armand Monnier — 
pray how do you know my name?” 

“ How should I not know it ? I have looked into the 
meetings of the ‘ Clubs rouges' I have heard you speak, 
and naturally asked your name. Bon-soivy M. Monnier ! 
When you reflect in cooler moments, you will see that if 
patriots excuse Brutus for first dishonoring and then exe- 
cuting his own son, an officer charged to defend his country 
may be surely pardoned for slaying a runaway to whom he 
was no relation, when in slaying he saved the man’s name 
and kindred from dishonor, unless, indeed, you insist on 
telling the world why he was slain.” 

“ I know your voice — I know it. Every sound becomes 

clearer to my ear. And if ” 

But while Monnier thus spoke, De Mauleon had hastened 
on. Monnier looked round, saw him gone, but did not 
pursue. He was just intoxicated enough to know that his 
footsteps were not steady, and he turned back to the wine- 
shop and asked surlily for more wine. 

Could you have seen him then as he leant swinging him- 
self to and fro against the wall, — had you known the man 
two years ago, you would have been a brute if you felt dis- 
gust. You could only have felt that profound compassion 
with which we gaze on a great royalty fallen. For the 
grandest of all royalties is that which takes its crown from 
Nature, needing no accident of birth. And Nature made 
the mind of Armand Monnier king-like: endowed it with 
lofty scorn of meanness and falsehood and dishonor, with 
warmth and tenderness of heart which had glow enough to 


THE PARISIANS. 


89 


spare from ties of kindred and hearth and home to extend 
to those distant circles of humanity over which royal natures 
would fain extend the shadow of their sceptre. 

How had the royalty of the man’s nature fallen thus? 
Royalty rarely falls from its own constitutional fault. It falls 
when, ceasing to be royal, it becomes subservient to had ad- 
visers. And what bad advisers, always appealing to his better 
qualities and so enlisting his worse, had discrowned this 
mechanic ? 

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” 

says the old-fashioned poet. “ Not so,” says the modern 
philosopher ; “ a little knowledge is safer than no knowledge.” 
Possibly, as all individuals and all communities must go through 
the stage of a little knowledge before they can arrive at that 
of much knowledge, the philosopher’s assertion may be right 
in the long run and applied to human kind in general. But 
there is a period, as there is a class, in which a little knowl- 
edge tends to terrible demoralization. And Armand Monnier 
lived in that period and was one of that class. The little 
knowledge that his mind, impulsive and ardent, had picked 
up out of books that warred with the great foundations of 
existing society, had originated in ill advices. A man stored 
with much knowledge would never have let Madame de Grant- 
mesnil’s denunciations of marriage-rites, or Louis Blanc’s 
vindication of Robespierre as the representative of the work- 
ing against the middle class, influence his practical life. He 
would have assessed such opinions at their real worth, and, 
whatever that worth might seem to him, would not to such 
opinions have committed the conduct of his life. Opinion 


90 


THE PARISIANS. 


is not fateful ; conduct is. A little knowledge crazes an 
earnest, warm-blooded, powerful creature like Armand Mon- 
nier into a fanatic. He takes an opinion which pleases him 
as a revelation from the gods ; that opinion shapes his con- 
duct ; that conduct is his fate. Woe to the philosopher who 
serenely flings before the little knowledge of the artisan 
dogmas as harmless as the Atlantis of Plato if only to be 
discussed by philosophers, and deadly as the torches of At^ 
if seized as articles of a creed by fanatics ! But thrice woe 
to the artisan who makes himself the zealot of the Dogma 1 
Poor Armand acts on the opinions he adopts ; proves his 
contempt for the marriage state by living with the wife of 
another ; resents, as natures so inherently manly must do, the 
Society that visits on her his defiance of its laws ; throws 
himself, head foremost, against that Society altogether ; neces- 
sarily joins all who have other reasons for hostility to Society ; 
he himself having every inducement not to join indiscrimi- 
nate strikes — high wages, a liberal employer, ample savings, 
the certainty of soon becoming employer himself. No ; that 
is not enough to the fanatic : he persists in being dupe and 
victim. He, this great king of labor, crowned by Nature, 
and cursed with that degree of little knowledge which does 
not comprehend how much more is required before a school- 
boy would admit it to be knowledge at all, — he rushes into 
the maddest of all speculations — that of the artisan with 
little knowledge and enormous faith — that which intrusts the 
safety and repose and dignity of life to some ambitious adven- 
turer, who uses his warm heart for the adventurer’s frigid 
purpose, much as the lawyer-government of September used 


THE PARISIANS. 


n 


the Communists, — much as, in every revolution of France, a 
Beitrand has used a Raton — much as, till the sound of the 
last trumpet, men very much worse than Victor de Maul^on 
will use men very much better than Armand Monnier, if the 
Arinand Monniers disdain the modesty of an Isaac Newton 
on hearing that a theorem to which he had given all the 
strength of his patient intellect was disputed. “ It may be 
60 meaning, I suppose, that it requires a large amount of 
experience ascertained before a man of much knowledge 
becomes that which a man of little knowledge is at a jump — - 
the fanatic of an experiment untried. 


CHAPTER IL 

Scarcely had De Maul 4 on quitted Lemercier before the 
latter w'as joined by two loungers scarcely less famished than 
himself — Savarin and De Breze. Like himself, too, both 
had been sufferers from illness, though not of a nature to be 
consigned to a hospital. All manner of diseases then had 
combined to form the pestilence which filled the streets 
with unregarded hearses — bronchitis, pneumonia, smallpox, 
a strange sort of spurious dysentery much more speedily fatal 
than the genuine. The three men, a year before so sleek, 
looked like ghosts under the withering sky; yet all three 
retained embers of the native Parisian humor, which their 
very breath on meeting sufficed to kindle up into jubilant 
sparks or rapid flashes. 


92 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ There are two consolations,” said Savarin, as the friends 
strolled, or rather crawled, towards the Boulevards — “two 
consolations for the gmrmet and for the proprietor in these 
days of trial for the gourmand, because the price of truffles 
is come down.” 

“ Truffles !” gasped De Br^ze, with watering mouth ; “ im- 
possible ! They are gone with the age of gold.” 

“ Not so. I speak on the best authority — my laundress; 
for she attends the succursale in the Bue de Chateaudun, 
and if the poor woman, being, luckily for me, a childless 
widow, gets a morsel she can spare, she sells it to me.” 

“Sells it!” feebly exclaimed Lemercier. “Croesus! you 
have money, then, and can buy?” 

“ Sells it — on credit ! I am to pension her for life if I 
live to have money again. Don’t interrupt me. This honest 
woman goes this morning to the succursale. I promise myself 
a delicious hiftek of horse. She gains the succursale., and 
the employ^ informs her that there is nothing left in his store 
except — truffles. A glut of those in the market allows him 
to offer her a bargain — seven francs la hoite. Send me seven 
francs, De Br4z6, and you shall share the banquet.” 

De Br^ze shook his head expressively. 

“ But,” resumed Savarin, “ though credit exists no more 
except with my laundress, upon terms of which the usury is 
necessarily proportioned to the risk, yet, as I had the honor 
before to observe, there is comfort for the proprietor. The 
instinct of property is imperishable.” 

“ Not in the house where I lodge,” said Lemercier. “ Two 
soldiers were billeted there ; and during my stay in the ambu- 


THE PARISIANS. 


93 


lance they enter my rooms and cart away all of the little 
furniture left there, except a bed and a table. Brought 
before a court-martial, they defend themselves by saying, 
‘ The rooms were abandoned.’ The excuse was held valid. 
They were let off with a reprimand, and a promise to restore 
what was not already disposed of. They have restored me 
another table and four chairs.” 

“ Nevertheless they had the instinct of property, though 
erroneously developed ; otherwise they would not have deemed 
any excuse for their act necessary. Now for my instance of 
the inherent tenacity of that instinct. A worthy citizen in 
want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall, and naturally 
carries off the door. He is apprehended by a gendarme who 
sees the act. ‘ Voleur^ he cries to the gendarme^ ‘ do you 
want to rob me of my property ?’ ‘ That door your property ? 
I saw you take it away.’ ‘ You confess,’ cries the citizen, 
triumphantly — ‘ you confess that it is my property ; for you 
saw me appropriate it.’ Thus you see how imperishable is 
the instinct of property. No sooner does it disappear as 
yours, than it reappears as mine.” 

“ I would laugh if I could,” said Lemercier, “ but such 
a convulsion would be fatal. Dieu des dieux^ how empty I 
am!” He reeled as he spoke, and clung to He Br4z4 for 
support. 

He Br4z4 had the reputation of being the most selfish of 
men. But at that moment, when a generous man might be 
excused for being selfish enough to desire to keep the little 
that he had for his own reprieve from starvation, this egotist 
became superb. “ Friends,” he cried, with enthusiasni, “ I 


94 


THE PARISIANS. 


have something yet in my pocket; we will dine, all three 
of us.” 

“ Dine !” faltered Lemercier. “ Dine ! I have not dined 
since I left the hospital. I breakfasted yesterday — on two 
mice upon toast. Dainty, but not nutritious. And I shared 
them with Fox.” 

‘‘ Fox ! Fox lives still, then ?” cried De Br4z4, startled. 

“ In a sort of way he does. But one mouse since yesterday 
morning is not much ; and he can’t expect that every day.” 

“ Why don’t you take him out?” asked Savarin. “Give 
him a chance of picking up a bone somewhere.” 

“ T dare not. He would be picked up himself. Dogs are 
getting very valuable : they sell for fifty francs apiece. Come, 
De Brez4, where are we to dine ?” 

“ I and Savarin can dine at the London Tavern upon rat 
pate or jugged cat. But it would be impertinence to invite 
a satrap like yourself, who has a whole dog in his larder — a 
dish of fifty fVancs — a dish for a king. Adieu, my dear 
Frederic. Allons^ Savarin.” 

“I feasted you on better meats than dog when I could 
afford it,” said Frederic, plaintively ; and the first time you 
invite me you retract the invitation. Be it so. Bon appetitJ* 

“ Ball r said De Brdze, catching Frederic’s arm as he 
turned to depart. “ Of course I was but jesting. Only, 
another day, when my pockets will be empty, do think what 
an excellent thing a roasted dog is, and make up your mind 
while Fox has still some little flesh on his bones.” 

“Flesh!” said Savarin, detaining them. “Look! See 
how right Voltaire was in saying, ^ Amusement is the flrst 


THE PARISIANS 


95 


necessity of civilized man.’ Paris can do without bread: 
Paris still retains Polichinello.” 

lie pointed to the puppet-show, round which a crowd, not 
of children alone, hut of men — middle-aged and old — were 
collected ^ while sous were dropped into the tin handed round 
by a squalid boy. 

“ And, mon ami,' whispered De Br^ze to Lemercier, with 
the voice of a tempting fiend, “ observe how Punch is without 
his dog.” 

It was true. The dog was gone,-^its place supplied by a 
melancholy emaciated cat. 

Frederic crawled towards the squalid boy. “ What has 
become of Punch’s dog?” 

“We ate him last Sunday. Next Sunday we shall have 
the cat in a pie,” said the urchin, with a sensual smack of the 
lips. 

“ Oh, Fox ! Fox !” murmured Frederic, as the three men 
went slowly down through the darkening streets — the roar 
of the Prussian guns heard afar, while distinct and near rang 
the laugh of the idlers round the Punch without a dog. 


CHAPTER III. 

While Be Br4ze and his friends were feasting at the Cafe 
Anglais^ and faring better than the host had promised — for 
the bill of fare comprised such luxuries as ass, mule, peas, 
fried potatoes, and champagne (champagne in some mysterious 


96 


THE PARISIANS. 


way was inexhaustible during the time of famine) — a very 
different group had assembled in the rooms of Isaura Cicogna. 
She and the Venosta had hitherto escaped the extreme desti- 
tution to which many richer persons had been reduced. It is 
true that Isaura’s fortune, placed in the hands of the absent 
Louvier and invested in the new street that was to have 
been, brought no return. It was true that in that street the 
Yenosta, dreaming of cent, per cent., had invested all her 
savings. But the Venosta, at the first announcement of war, 
had insisted on retaining in hand a small sum from the 
amount Isaura had received from her that might 

suffice for current expenses, and with yet more acute foresight 
had laid in stores of provisions and fuel immediately after the 
probability of a siege became apparent. But even the provi>- 
dent mind of the Venosta had never foreseen that the siege 
would endure so long, or that the prices of all articles of 
necessity would rise so high. And meanwhile all resources — 
money, fuel, provisions — had been largely drawn upon by the 
charity and benevolence of Isaura, without much remonstrance 
on the part of the Venosta, whose nature was very accessible 
to pity. Unfortunately, too, of late money and provisions 
had failed to Monsieur and Madame Bameau, their income 
consisting partly of rents, no longer paid, and the profits of 
a sleeping partnership in the old shop, from which custom 
had departed ; so that they came to share the fireside and 
meals at the rooms of their son’s Jiancie with little scruple, 
because utterly unaware that the money retained and the 
provisions stored by the Venosta were now nearly exhausted. 

The patriotic ardor which had first induced the elder 


, THE PARISIANS. 


97 


Kameau to volunteer his service's as a National Guard had 
been ere this cooled, if not suppressed, first by the hardships 
of the duty, and then by the disorderly conduct of his asso- 
ciates and their ribald talk and obscene songs. He was 
much beyond the age at which he could be registered. His 
son was, however, compelled to become his substitute, though, 
from his sickly health and delicate frame, attached to that 
portion of the National Guard which took no part in actual 
engagements and was supposed to do work on the ramparts 
and maintain order in the city. 

In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and habits, Gustave 
signalized himself as one of the loudest declainiers against the 
imbecility of the government, and in the demand for imme- 
diate and energetic action, no matter at what loss of life, on 
the part of all — except the heroic force to which he himself 
was attached. Still, despite his military labors, Gustave found 
leisure to contribute to Red journals, and his contributions 
paid him tolerably well. To do him justice, his parents con- 
cealed from him the extent of their destitution ; they, on 
their part, not aware that he w^as so able to assist them, 
rather fearing that he himself had nothing else for support 
but his scanty pay as a National Guard. In fact, of late the 
parents and son had seen little of each other. M. Rameau, 
though a Liberal politician, was liberal as a tradesman, not as 
a Red Republican or a Socialist. And, though little heeding 
his son’s theories while the Empire secured him from the 
practical efiect of them, he was now as sincerely frightened 
at the chance of the Communists becoming rampant as most 
of the Parisian tradesmen were. Madame Rameau, on her 
VOL. III.— E 7 

\ 


98 


THE PARISIANS. 


side, though, she had the dislike to aristocrats which was 
prevalent with her class, was a stanch Roman Catholic, and, 
seeing in the disasters that had befallen her country the 
punishment justly incurred by its sins, could not but bo 
shocked by the opinions of Gustave, though she little knew 
that he was the author of certain articles in certain journals, 
in which these opinions were proclaimed with a vehemence 
far exceeding that which they assumed in his conversation. 
She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed with pas- 
sionate tears, on his irreligious principles ; and from that 
moment Gustave shunned to give her another opportunity of 
insulting his pride and depreciating his wisdom. 

Partly to avoid meeting his parents, ; artly because he 
recoiled almost as much from the ennui of meeting the other 
visitors at her apartments — the Paris ladies associated with her 
in the ambulance, Raoul de Vandemar, whom he especially 
hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had recently come into 
intimate friendship with both the Italian ladies — his visits to 
Isaura had become exceedingly rare. He made his incessant 
military duties the pretext for absenting himself ; and now, 
on this evening, there were gathered round Isaura’ s hearth — 
on which burned almost the last of the hoarded fuel — the 
Venosta, the two Rameaus, and the Abb6 Yertpr4, who was 
attached as confessor to the society of which Isaura was so 
zealous a member. The old priest and the young poetess had 
become dear friends. There is in the nature of a woman (and 
especially of a woman at once so gifted and so childlike as 
Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards faith with a 
reckless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always suggesting 


THE PARISIANS. 


99 


query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere 
of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that 
“ bridal of the earth and sky” which we call religion. And 
hence, to natures like Isaura’s, that link between the woman 
and the priest, which the philosophy of France has never 
been able to dissever. 

“ It is growing late,” said Madame Rameau ; “ I am begin- 
ning to feel uneasy. Our dear Isaura is not yet returned.” 

“ You need be under no apprehension,” said the Abb6. 
“ The ladies attached to the ambulance of which she is so 
tender and zealous a sister incur no risk. There are always 
brave men related to the sick and wounded who see to the 
safe return of the women. My poor Raoul visits that ambu- 
lance daily. His kinsman, M. de Rochebriant, is there among 
the wounded.” 

“ Not seriously hurt? I hope,” said the Yenosta ; “ not dis- 
figured ? He was so handsome ; it is only the ugly warrior 
whom a sear on the face improves.” 

“Don’t be alarmed. Signora; the Prussian guns spared 
his face. His wounds in themselves were not dangerous, 
but he lost a good deal of blood. Raoul and the Christian 
brothers found him insensible among a heap of the slain.” 

“ M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon recovered the 
shock of his poor brother’s death,” said Madame Rameau. 
“ There is very little heart in an aristocrat.” 

The Abbe’s mild brow contracted. “ Have more charity, 
my daughter. It is because Raoul’s sorrow for his lost 
brother is so deep and so holy that he devotes himself more 
than ever to the service of the Father which is in heaven. 


100 


THE PARISIANS. 


He said, a day or two after the burial, when plans for 9 
monument to Enguerrand were submitted to him, ‘ May 
my prayer be vouchsafed, and my life be a memorial of him 
more acceptable to his gentle spirit than monuments of 
bronze or marble. May I be divinely guided and sustained 
in my desire to do such good acts as he would have done had 
he been spared longer to earth. And whenever tempted to 
weary, may my conscience whisper. Betray not the trust left 
to thee by thy brother, lest thou be not reunited to him at 
last.’ ” 

“ Pardon me, pardon !” murmuted Madame Bameau humbly, 
while the Venosta burst into tears. 

The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest ecclesiastic, 
was a cheery and genial man of the world ; and in order to 
relieve Madame Bameau from the painful self-reproach he 
had before excited, he turned the conversation. “ I must 
beware, however,” he said, with his pleasant laugh, “ as to 
the company in which I interfere in family questions, and 
especially in which I defend my poor Baoul from any charge 
brought against him. For some good friend this day sent 
me a terrible organ' of Communistic philosophy, in which we 
humble priests are very roughly handled, and I myself »ra 
specially singled out by name as a pestilent intermeddle in 
the affairs of private households. I am said to set the women 
against the brave men who are friends of the people, and am 
cautioned by very truculent threats to cease from such vil- 
lainous practices.” And here, with a dry humor that turned 
into ridicule what would otherwise have excited disgust and 
indignation among his listeners, he read aloud passages replete 


THE PARISIANS. 


101 


with a sort of false eloquence which was then the vogue 
among the Ked journals. In these passages, not only the 
Abbe was pointed out for popular execration, but Raoul de 
Vandcmar, though not expressly named, was clearly indicated 
as a pupil of the Abb4’s, the type of a lay Jesuit. 

The Venosta alone did not share in the contemptuous 
laughter with which the inflated style of these diatribes 
inspired the Rameaus. Her simple Italian mind was horror- 
stricken by language which the Abb4 treated with ridicule. 

“ Ah !” said M. Rameau, “ I guess the author — that fire- 
brand Felix Pyat.” 

“ No,” answered the Abb4 ; “ the writer signs himself by 
the name of a more learned atheist— Diderot lejewne.^' 

Here the door opened, and Raoul entered, accompanying 
Isaui-a. A change had come over the face of the young 
Vandemar since his brother’s death. The lines about the 
mouth had deepened, the cheeks had lost their rounded con- 
tour and grown somewhat hollow. But the expression was 
as serene as ever, perhaps even less pensively melancholy. 
His whole aspect was that of a man who had sorrowed, but 
been supported in sorrow ; perhaps it was more sweet — 
certainly it was more lofty. 

And, as if there were in the atmosphere of his presence 
something that communicated the likeness of his own soul to 
others, since Isaura had been brought into his companionship, 
her own lovely face had caught the expression that prevailed 
in his — that, too, had become more sweet— that, too, had 
befcome more lofty. 

The friendship that had grown up between these two 


102 


THE PARISIANS. 


young mourners was of a very rare nature. It had in it no 
sentiment that could ever warm into the passion of human 
love. Indeed, had Isaura’s heart been free to give away, love 
for Raoul de Vandemar would have seemed to her a profana- 
tion. He was never more priestly than when he was most 
tender. And the tenderness of Raoul towards her was that 
of some saint-like nature towards the acolyte whom it attracted 
upwards. He had once, just before Enguerrand’s death, 
spoken to Isaura with a touching candor as to his own pre- 
dilection for a monastic life. “ The worldly avocations that 
open useful and honorable careers for others have no charm 
for me. I care not for riches nor power, nor honors nor 
fame. The austerities of the conventual life have no terror 
for me ; on the contrary, they have a charm, for with them 
are abstraction from earth and meditation on heaven. In 
earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished dreams 
of human love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort 
of veneration with which I regarded one to whom I owe — 
humanly speaking — whatever of good there may be in me. 
J ust when first taking my place among the society of young 
men who banish from their life all thought of another, I 
came under the influence of a woman who taught me to see 
that holiness was beauty. She gradually associated me with 
her acts of benevolence, and from her I learned to love God 
too well not to be indulgent to his creatures. I know not 
whether the attachment I felt to her could have been inspired 
in one who had not from childhood conceived a romance, not 
perhaps justified by history, for the ideal images of chivalry. 
My feeling for her at first was that of the pure and poetic 


THE PARISIANS. 


103 


Jbomage which a young knight was permitted, sans reproche^ 
to render to some fair queen or chatelaine^ whose colors he 
wore in the lists, whose spotless repute he would have periled 
his life to defend. But soon even that sentiment, pure as 
it was, became chastened from all breath of earthly love, in 
proportion as the admiration refined itself into reverence. 
She has often urged me to marry, but I have no bride on 
this earth. I do but want to see Enguerrand happily married, 
and then I quit the world for the cloister.” 

But after Enguerrand’s death, Baoul resigned all idea of 
the convent. That evening, as he attended to their homes 
Isaura and the othen ladies attached to the ambulance, he 
said, in answer to inquiries about his mother, “ She is resigned 
and calm ; I have j: romised her I will not, while she lives, 
bury her other son : I renounce my dreams of the monastery.” 

Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isaura’s. The 
Abbe accompanied him on his way home. “ I have a request 
to make to you,” said the former ; “ you know, of course, 
your distant cousin the Vicomte de Mauleon?” 

“ Yes. Not so well as I ought, for Enguerrand liked him.” 

“ Well enough, at all events, to call on him with a request 
which I am commissioned to make, but it might come bettor 
from you as a kinsman. I am a stranger to him, and I know 
not whether a man of that sort would not regard as an offi- 
cious intermeddling any communication made to him by a 
priest. The matter, however, is a very simple one. At the 

convent of there is a poor nun who is, I fear, dying. 

Sht has an intense desire to see M. de Mauleon, whom she 
declares to be her uncle and her only surviving relative. The 


104 


THE PARISIANS. 


laws of the convent are not too austere to prevent the inter 
view she seeks in such a case. I should add that I am not 
acquainted with her previous history. I am not the confessor 
of the sisterhood ; he, poor man, was badly wounded by a 
chance ball a few days ago when attached to an ambulance on 
the ramparts. As soon as the surgeon would allow him to see 
any one, he sent fbr me, and bade me go to the nun I speak 
of — Sister Ursula. It seems that he had informed her that 
M. de Mauleon was at Paris, and had promised to ascertain 
his address. His wound had prevented his doing so, but 
he trusted to me to procure the information. I am well 
acquainted with the Superieure of the* convent, and I flatter 
myself that she holds me in esteem. I had therefore no 
difficulty to obtain her permission to see this poor nun, which 
I did this evening. She implored me for the peace of hei: 
soul to lose no time in finding out M. de Maul4on’s address 
and entreating him to visit her. Lest he should demur, I 
was to give him the name by which he had known her in 
the world — Louise Duval. Of course I obeyed. The address 
of a man who has so distinguished himself in this unhappy 
siege I very easily obtained, and repaired at once to M. de 
Mauleon’s apartment. I there learned that he was from 
home, and it was uncertain whether he would not spend the 
night on the ramparts.” 

“ I will not fail to see him early in the morning,” said 
Raoul, “ and execute your commission.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


103 


CHAPTEE IV. 

De MaulIion was somewhat surprised by Kaoul’s visit the 
next morning. He had no great liking for a kinsman whose 
politely distant reserve towards him, in contrast to poor 
Enguerrand’s genial heartiness, had much wounded his sen- 
sitive self-respect; nor could he comprehend the religious 
scruples which forbade Raoul to take a soldier’s share in the 
battle-field, though in seeking there to save the lives of others 
so fearlessly hazarding his oWn life. 

“ Pardon,” said Raoul, with his sweet mournful smile, 
“ the unseasonable hour, at which I disturb you. But your 
duties on the ramparts and mine in the hospital begin early, 
and I have promised the Abb4 Yertpre to communicate a 
message of a nature which perhaps you may deem pressing.” 
He proceeded at once to repeat what the Abbe had communi- 
cated to him the night before relative to the illness and the 
request of the nun. 

“ Louise Duval !” exclaimed the Vicomte, — “ discovered at 
last, and a religieuse ! Ah ! I now understand why she never 
sought me out when I reappeared at Paris. Tidings of that 
sort do not penetrate the walls of a convent. I am greatly 
obliged to you, M. de Vandemar, for the trouble you have so 
kindly taken. This poor nun is related to me, and I will at 
once obey the summons. But this convent des I am 

E* 


106 


THE PARISIANS. 


ashamed to say I know not where it is. A long way off, I 
suppose ?” 

“ Allow me to be your guide,” said Raoul ; “ I should take 
it as a favor to be allowed to see a little more of a man whom 
my lost brother held in such esteem.” 

Victor was touched by this conciliatory speech, and in a 
few minutes more the two men were on their way to the 
convent on the other side of the Seine. 

Victor commenced the conversation by a warm and heart- 
felt tribute to Enguerrand’s character and memory. “ I 
never,” he said, “knew a nature more rich in the most 
endearing qualities of youth; so gentle, so high-spirited, 
rendering every virtue more attractive, and redeeming such 
few faults or foibles as youth so situated and so tempted cannot 
wholly escape, with an urbanity not conventional, not artificial, 
but reflected from the frankness of a genial temper and the 
tenderness of a generous heart. Be comforted for his loss, 
my kinsman. A brave death was the proper crown of that 
Deautiful life.” 

Baoul made no answer, but pressed gratefully the arm now 
linked within his own. The companions walked on in silence; 
Victor’s mind settling on the visit he was about to make to 
the niece so long mysteriously lost and now so unexpectedly 
found. Louise had inspired him with a certain interest from 
her beauty and force of character, but never with any warm 
affection. He felt relieved to find that her life had found its 
close in the sanctuary of the convent. He had never divested 
himself of a certain fear, inspired by Louvier’s statement, that 
she might live to bring scandal and disgrace on the name he 


THE PARISIANS. 


107 


Lad with so much diflGicultj, and after so lengthened an 
anguish, partially cleared in his own person. 

Raoul left De Mauleon at the gate of the convent, and took 
his way towards the hospitals where he visited, and the poor 
whom he relieved. 

Victor was conducted silently into the convent parloir ; 
and, after waiting there several minutes, the door opened, 
and the Sup4rieure entered. As she advanced towards him, 
with stately step and solemn visage, De Mauleon recoiled, 
and uttered a half-suppressed exclamation that partook both 
of amaze and awe. Could it be possible? Was this majestic 
woman, with the grave impassible aspect, once the ardent girl 
whose tender letters he had cherished through stormy years, 
and only burned on the night before the most perilous of his 
battle-fields? — this the one, the sole one, whom in his 
younger dreams he had. seen as his destined wife ? It was 
so — it was. Doubt vanished when he heard her voice ; and 
yet how different every tone, every accent, from those of the 
low, soft, thrilling music that had breathed in the voice of old ! 

“ M. de Mauleon,” said the Superieure, calmly, “ I grieve 
to sadden you by very mournful intelligence. Yesterday 
evening, when the Abbe undertook to convey to you the 
request of our Sister Ursula, although she was beyond mortal 
hope of recovery — as otherwise you will conceive that I could 
not have relaxed the rules of this house so as to sanction 
your visit — there was no apprehension of immediate danger. 
It was believed that her sufferings would be prolonged for 
some days. I saw her late last night before retiring to my cell, 
and she seemed even stronger than she had been for the last 


108 


THE PARISIANS. 


week. A sister remained at watch in her cell. Towards 
morning she fell into apparently quiet sleep, and in that sleep 
she passed away.” The Sup4rieure here crossed herself, and 
murmured pious words in Latin. 

“Dead! my poor niece!” said Victor, feelingly, roused 
from his stun at the first sight of the Superieure by her 
measured tones, and the melancholy information she so com- 
posedly conveyed to him. “ I cannot, then, even learn why 
she so wished to see me once more, — or what she- might havt 
requested at my hands !” 

“ Pardon, M. le Vicomte. Such sorrowful consolation 1 
have resolved to afibrd you, not without scruples of con- 
science, but not without sanction of the excellent Abbe 
Vertpr^, whom I summoned early this morning to decide my 
duties in the sacred office I hold. As soon as Sister Ursula 
heard of your return to Paris, she obtained my permission to 
address to you a letter, subjected, when finished, to my perusal 
and sanction. She felt that she had much on her mind which 
her feeble state might forbid her to make known to you in 
conversation with sufl5.cient fullness ; and, as she could only 
have seen you in presence of one of the sisters, she imagined 
that there would also be less restraint in a written communi- 
cation. In fine, her request was that, when you ealled, I 
might first place this letter in your hands, and allow you 
time to read it, before being admitted to her presence ; when 
a few words, conveying your promise to attend to the wishes 
with which you would then be acquainted, would sufiice for 
an interview in her exhausted condition. Do I make myself 
understood ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


109 


“ Certainly, Madame, — and the letter ?” 

“ She had concluded last evening ; and when I took leave 
of her later in the. night, she placed it in my hands for 
approval. M, le Yicomte, it pains me to say that there is 
much in the tone of that letter which I grieve for and con- 
demn. And it was. my intention to point this out to our 
sister at morning, and tell her that passages must be altered 
before I could give to you the letter. Her sudden decease 
deprived me of this opportunity. I could not, of course, 
alter or erase a line— a word. My only option was to suppress 
the letter altogether, or give it you intact. The Abbe thinks 
that, on the whole, my duty does not forbid the dictate of 
my own impulse — my own feelings ; and I now place this 
letter in your hands.” 

De Mauleon took a packet, unsealed, from the thin white 
fingers of the Superieure, and, as he bent to receive it, lifted 
towards her eyes eloquent with a sorrowful, humble pathos, 
in which it was impossible for the heart of a woman who had 
loved not to see a reference to the past which the lips did not 
dare to utter. 

A faint, scarce perceptible blush stole over the marble cheek 
of the nun. But, with an exquisite delicacy, in which survived 
the woman while reigned the nun, she replied to the appeal : . 

“ M. Victor de Mauleon, before, having thus jnet, we part 
forever, permit a poor religimse to say with what joy — a 
joy rendered happier because it was tearful — I have learned 
through the Abb4 Vertpre that the honor which, as between 
man and man, no one who had once known you could ever 
doubt, you have lived to vindicate from calumny.” 


110 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Ah ! you have heard that — at last, at last 1” 

“ I repeat — of the honor thus deferred, I never doubted.’ 
The Superieure hurried on. “ Greater joy it has been to me 
to hear from the same venerable source that, while found 
bravest among the defenders of your country, you are clear 
from all alliance with the assailants of your God. Continue 
BO, continue so, Victor de Mauleon.” 

She retreated to the door, and then turned towards him 
with a look in which all the marble had melted away ; adding, 
with words more formally nunlike, yet unmistakably woman- 
like, than those which had gone before, “That to the last 
you may be true to God, is a prayer never by me omitted.” 

She spoke, and vanished. 

In a kind of dim and dreamlike bewilderment Victor de 
Mauleon found himself without the walls of the convent. 
Mechanically, as a man does when the routine of his life is 
presented to him, from the first Minister of State to the poor 
clown at a suburban theatre, doomed to appear at their posts, 
to prose on a Beer Bill, or grin through a horse-collar, though 
their hearts are bleeding at every pore with some household 
or secret affliction, — mechanically De Mauleon went his way 
towards the ramparts, at a section of which he daily drilled 
his raw recruits. Proverbial for his severity towards those 
who offended, for the cordiality of his praise of those who 
pleased his soldierly judgment, no change of his demeanor 
was visible that morning, save that he might be somewhat 
milder to the one, somewhat less hearty to the other. This 
routine duty done, he passed slowly towards a more deserted 
because a more exposed part of the defenses, and seated him 


THE PARISIANS. 


Ill 


self on the frozen sward alone. The cannon thundered 
around him. He heard unconsciously : from time to time 
an ohus hissed and splintered close at his feet ; — he saw with 
abstracted eye. His soul was with the past ; and, brooding 
over all that in the past lay buried there, came over him a 
conviction of the vanity of the human earth-bounded objects 
for which we burn or freeze, far more absolute than had 
grown out of the worldly cynicism connected with his worldly 
ambition. The sight of that face, associated with the one 
pure romance of his reckless youth, the face of one so 
estranged, so serenely aloft from all memories of youth, of 
romance, of passion, smote him in the midst of the new 
hopes of the new career, as the look on the skull of the 
woman he had so loved and so mourned, when disburied 
from her grave, smote the brilliant noble who became the 
stern reformer of La Trappe. And while thus gloomily 
meditating, the letter of the poor Louise Duval was forgotten. 
She whose existence had so troubled, and crossed, and partly 
marred the lives of others,— she, scarcely dead, and already 
forgotten by her^ nearest of kin. Well, had she not for- 
gotten, put wholly out of her mind, all that was due to those 
much nearer to her than is an uncle to a niece ? 

The short, bitter, sunless day was advancing towards its 
decline, before Victor roused himself with a quick impatient 
start from his, reverie, and took forth the letter from the 
dead nun. 

It began with expressions of gratitude, of joy at the thought 
that she should see him again before she died, thank him for 
his past kindness, and receive, she trusted, his assurance that 


112 


THE PARISIANS, 


he would attend to her last remorseful injunctions. I pass 
over much that followed in the explanation of events in her 
life sufficiently known to the reader. She stated, as the 
strongest reason why she had refused the hand of Louvier, 
her knowledge that she should in due. time become a mother 
—a fact concealed from Victor, secure that he would then 
urge her not to annul her informal marriage, but rather insist 
on the ceremonies that would render it valid. She touched 
briefly on her confldential intimacy with Madame Marigny, 
the exchange of name and papers, her confinement in the 
neighborhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse, 
the journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no 
more. The documents obtained through the agent of her 
easy-tempered kinsman, the late Marquis de Rochebriant, and 
her subsequent domestication in the house of the Von Rudes- 
heims, — all this it is needless to do more here than briefly 
recapitulate. The letter then went on : “ While thus kindly 
treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I 
was on the terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, 
an Italian of noble birth. He was the' only man I ever 
cared for. I loved him with frail human passion. , I could 
not tell him my true history. I could not tell him that I 
had a child ; such intelligence would have made him renounce 
me at once. He had a daughter, still but an infant, by a 
former marriage, then brought up in France. He wished to 
take her to his house, and his second wife to supply the place 
of her mother. What was I to do with the child I had left 
near Aix? While doubtful and distracted, I read an adver- 
tisement in the jaurnals to the effect that a French lady,, then 


THE PARISIANS. 


113 


staying in Coblentz, wished to adopt a female child not ex- 
ceeding the age of six ; the child to he wholly resigned to 
her hy the parents, she undertaking to rear and provide for it 
as her own. I resolved to go to Coblentz at once. I did so. 
I saw this lady. She Seemed in affluent circumstances, yet 
young, but a confirmed invalid, confined the greater part of 
the day to her sofa by some malady of the spine. She told 
me very frankly her story. She had been a professional 
dancer on the stage, had married respectably, quitted the stage, 
become a widow, and shortly afterwards been seized with the 
complaint that would probably for life keep her a secluded 
prisoner in her room. Thus afflicted, and without tie, in- 
terest, or object in the world, she conceived the idea of 
adopting a child that she might bring up to tend and cherish 
her as a daughter. In thisj the imperative condition was that 
the child should never be resought by the parents. She was 
pleased by my manner and appearance : she did not wish her 
adopted daughter to be the child of peasants. She asked me 
for no references, — made no inquiries. She said cordially that 
she wished for no knowledge that, through any indiscretion 
of her own, communicated to the child, might lead her to seek 
the discovery of her real parents. In fine, I left Coblentz 
on the understanding that I was to bring the infant, and, if it 
pleased Madame Surville, the agreement was concluded. 

“ I then repaired to Aix. I saw the child. Alas ! un- 
natural mother that I was, the sight only more vividly 
brought before me the sense of my own perilous position. 
Yet the child was lovely, — a likeness of myself, but lovelier 
far, for it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness. And they 
VoL. III. 8 


114 


THE PARISIANS. 


told her to call me '■Maman.' Oh, did I not relent when I 
heard that name? No; it jarred on my ear as a word of 
reproach and shame. In walking with the infant towards 
the railway station, imagine my dismay when suddenly I met 
the man who had been taught to believe me dead. I soon 
discovered that his dismay was equal to my own, — that I had 
nothing to fear from his desire to claim me. It did occur to 
me for a ihoment to resign his child to him. But when he 
shrank reluctantly from a half suggestion to that effect, my 
pride was wounded, my conscience absolved. And, after all, 
it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any mo- 
tive for retracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen 
nor heard of him more. I took the child to Coblentz. 
Madame Surville was charmed with its prettiness and prattle, 
— charmed still more when I rebuked the poor infant for 
calling me '‘MamanJ and said, ‘ Thy real mother is here.’ 
Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof 
I had quitted, and shortly after became the wife of Ludovico 
Cicogna. 

“ My punishment soon began. His was a light, fickle, 
pleasure-hunting nature. He soon grew weary of me. My 
very love made me unamiable to him. I became irritable, 
jealous, exacting. His daughter, who now came to live with 
us, was another subject of discord. I knew that he loved 
her better than me. I became a harsh step-mother; and 
Ludovico’s reproaches, vehemently made, nursed all my 
angriest passions. But a son of this new marriage was born 
to myself. My pretty Luigi ! how my heart became wrapt 
up in him ! Nursing him, I forgot resentment against his 


THE PARISIANS. 


115 


father. Well, poor Cicogna fell ill and died. I mourned 
him sincerely ; but my boy was left. Poverty then fell on 
me, — poverty extreme. Cicogna’s sole income was derived 
from a post in the Austrian dominion in Italy, and ceased 
with it. He received a small pension in compensation j that 
died with him. 

“ At this time, an Englishman with whom Ludovico had 
made acquaintance in Venice, and who visited often at our 
house in Verona, offered me his hand. He had taken an 
extraordinary liking to Isaura, Cicogna’s daughter by his first 
marriage. But I think his proposal was dictated partly by 
compassion for me, and more by affection for her. For the 
sake of my boy Luigi I married him. He was a good man, 
of retired learned habits with which I had no sympathy. 
His companionship overwhelmed me with ennui. But I bore 
it patiently for Luigi’s sake. God saw that my heart was as 
much as ever estranged from Him, and He took away my all 
on earth — my boy. Then in my desolation I turned to our 
Holy Church for comfort. I found a friend in the priest 
my confessor. I was startled to learn from him how guilty 
I had been — was still. Pushing to an extreme the doctrines 
of the Church, he would not allow that my first marriage, 
though null by law, was void in the eyes of Heaven. Was 
not the death of the child I so cherished a penalty due to my 
sin towards the child I had abandoned ? 

“ These thoughts pressed on me night and day. With 
the consent and approval of the good priest, I determined to 
quit the roof of M. Selby and to devote myself to the dis- 
covery of my forsaken Julie. 


116 


THE PARISIANS. 


“I had a painful interview with M. Selby. I announced 
my intention to separate from him. I alleged as a reason my 
conscientious repugnance to live with a professed heretic — an 
enemy to our Holy Church. When M. Selby found that he 
could not shake my resolution, he lent himself to it with the 
forbearance and generosity which he had always exhibited. 
On our marriage he had settled on me five thousand pounds, 
to be absolutely mine in the event of his death. He now 
proposed to concede to me the interest on that capital during 
his life, and he undertook the charge of my step-daughter 
Isaura, and secured to her all the rest he had to leave ; such 
landed property as he possessed in England passing to a dis- 
tant relative. 

“ So we parted, not with hostility — tears were shed on both 
sides. I set out for Coblentz. Madame Surville had long 
since quitted that town, devoting some years to the round 
of various mineral spas in vain hope of cure. Not without 
some difficulty I traced her to her last residence in the 
neighborhood of Paris, but she was then no more — her 
death accelerated by the shock occasioned by the loss of her 
whole fortune, which she had been induced to place in one 
of the numerous fraudulent companies by which so many 
have been ruined. Julie, who was with her at the time of 
h6r death, had disappeared shortly after it — none could tell 
me whither ; but, from such hints as I could gather, the poor 
child, thus left destitute, had been betrayed into sinful 
courses. 

“ Probably I might yet by searching inquiry have found 
her out ; you will say it was my duty at least to institute 


THE PARISIANS. 


117 


such inquiry. No doubt ; I now remorsefully feel that it 
was. I did not think so at the time. The Italian priest 
had given me a few letters of introduction to French ladies 
with whom, when they had sojourned at Florence, he had 
made acquaintance. These ladies were very strict devotees, 
formal observers of those decorums by which devotion pro- 
claims itself to the world. They had received me not only 
with kindness but with marked respect. They chose to 
exalt into the noblest self-sacrifice the act of my leaving M. 
Selby’s house. Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to 
it in the priest’s letter, they represented me as quitting a 
luxurious home and an idolizing husband rather than con- 
tinue intimate intercourse with the enemy of my religion. 
This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its fumes. I 
recoiled from the thought of shattering the pedestal to which 
I had found myself elevated. What if I should discover 
my daughter in one from the touch of whose robe these holy 
women would recoil as from the rags of a leper? No; it 
would be impossible for me to own her — impossible for me 
to give her the shelter of my roof. Nay, if discovered to 
hold any commune with such an outcast, no explanation, no 
excuse short of the actual truth, would avail with these 
austere judges of human error. And the actual truth 
would be yet deeper disgrace. I reasoned away my con- 
science. If I looked for example in the circles in which I 
had obtained reverential place, I could find no instance in 
which a girl who had fallen from virtue was not repudiated 
by her nearest relatives. Nay, when I thought of my own 
mother, had not her father refused to see, her, to acknowh 


118 


THE PARISIANS. 


edge her child, from no other oiFense than that of a mhaUi- 
ance which wounded the family pride ? That pride, alas ! 
was in my blood — my sole inheritance from the family 1 
sprang from. 

“ Thus it went on, till I had grave symptoms of a disease 
which rendered the duration of my life uncertain. My con- 
science awoke and tortured me. I resolved to take the veil. 
Vanity and pride again ! My resolution was applauded by 
those whose opinion had so swayed my mind and my conduct. 
Before I retired into the convent from which I write, 1 made 
l^al provision as to the bulk of the fortune which, by the 
death of M. Selby, has become absolutely at my disposal. 
One thousand pounds amply sufficed for dotation to the con- 
vent ; the other four thousand pounds are given in trust to 

the eminent notary, M. Nadaud, Rue . On applying to 

him, you will find that the sum, with the accumulated interest, 
is bequeathed to you, — a tribute of gratitude for the assistance 
you afforded me in the time of your own need, and the kind- 
ness with which you acknowledged our relationship and com- 
miserated my misfortunes. 

“ But, oh, my uncle, find out — a man can do so with a 
facility not accorded to a woman — what has become of this 
poor Julie, and devote what you may deem right and just of 
the sum thus bequeathed to place her above want and tempta- 
tion. In doing so, I know you will respect my name : I would 
not have it dishonor you, indeed. 

“ I have been employed in writing this long letter since 
the day I heard you were in Paris. It has exhausted the 
feeble remnants of my strength. It will be given to you 


THE PARISIANS. 


119 


before the interview I at once dread and long for, and in that 
interview you will not rebuke me. Will you, my kind uncle ? 
No, you will only soothe and pity ! 

“Would that I were worthy to pray for others, that I 
might add, ‘ May the Saints have you in their keeping, and 
lead you to faith in the Holy Church, which has power to 
absolve from sins those who repent as I do.’ ” 

The letter dropped from Victor’s hand. He took it upj 
smoothed it mechanically and with a dim, abstracted, bewil- 
dered, pitiful wonder. Well might the Sup4rieure have 
hesitated to allow confessions, betraying a mind so little regu- 
lated by genuine religious faith, to pass into other hands. 
Evidently it was the paramount duty of rescuing from want 
or from sin the writer’s forsaken child, that had overborne 
all other considerations in the mind of the woman and the 
priest she consulted. 

Throughout that letter, what a strange perversion of under- 
standing! what a half-unconscious confusion of wrong and 
right ! — the duty marked out so obvious and so neglected ; 
even the religious sentiment awakened by the conscience so 
dividing itself from the moral instinct I the dread of being 
thought less religious by obscure comparative strangers stronger 
than the moral obligation to discover and reclaim the child 
for whose errors, if she had erred, the mother who so selfishly 
forsook her was alone responsible I even at the last, at the 
approach of death, the love for a name she had never made 
a self-sacrifice to preserve unstained ; and that concluding 
exhortation,— that reliance on a repentance in which there 
was so qualified a reparation I 


120 THE PARISIANS. 

More would Victor de Maul4on have wondered had he 
known those points of similarity in character, and on the 
nature of their final bequests, between Louise Duval and the 
husband she had deserted. By one of those singular coinci- 
dences which, if this work be judged by the ordinary rules 
presented to the ordinary novel-reader, a critic would not 
unjustly impute to defective invention in the author, the 
provision for this child, deprived of its natural parents during 
their lives, is left to the discretion and honor of trustees, 
accompanied on the part of the consecrated Louise and “ the 
blameless King” with the injunction of respect to their 
worldly reputations — tyvo parents so opposite in condition, in 
creed, in disposition, yet assimilating in that point of indi- 
vidual character in which it touches the wide vague circle of 
human opinion. For this, indeed, the excuses of Bichard 
King are strong, inasmuch as the secrecy he sought was for 
the sake, not of his own memory, but that of her whom the 
world knew only as his honored wife. The conduct of 
Louise admits no such excuse ; she dies, as she had lived, an 
Egoist. But, whatever the motives of the parents, what is 
the fate of the deserted child? What revenge does the 
worldly opinion, which the parents would escape for them- 
selves, inflict on the innocent infant to whom the bulk of 
their worldly possessions is to be clandestinely conveyed? 
Would all the gold of Ophir be compensation enough for 
her? 

Slowly De Mauleon roused himself, and turned from the 
solitary place where he had been seated to a more crowded 
part of the ramparts. He passed a group of young Mohloti^ 


THE PARISIANS. 


121 


with flowers wreathed round their gun-barrels. “ If,” said 
one of them gayly, “ Paris wants bread, it never wants flowers.” 
His companions laughed merrily, and burst out into a scurrile 
song in ridicule of St. Trochu. Just then an ohus fell a few 
yards before the group. The sound only for a moment 
drowned the song, but the splinters struck a man in a coarse, 
ragged dress, who had stopped to listen to the singers. At 
his sharp cry, two men hastened to his side : one was Victor 
de Mauleon ; the other was a surgeon, who quitted another 
group of idlers — National Guards — attracted by the shriek 
that summoned his professional aid. The poor man was 
terribly wounded. The surgeon, glancing at De Mauleon, 
shrugged his shoulders, and muttered, “ Past help !” The 
sufierer turned his haggard eyes on the Vicomte, and gasped 
out, “ M. de Mauleon ?” 

“ That is my name,” answered Victor, surprised, and not 
immediately recognizing the sufferer. 

Hist, Jean Lebeau ! — look at me : you recollect me now 
— Marc le Roux, concierge to the Secret Council. Ay, I 
found out who you were long ago — followed you homo from 
the last meeting you broke up. But I did not betray you, 
or you would have been murdered long since. Beware of 

the old set — beware of — of ” Here his voice broke off 

into shrill exclamations of pain. Curbing his last agonies 
with a powerful effort, he faltered forth — “ You owe me a 
service — see to the little one at home — she is starving.” The 
death-rdZe came on ; in a few moments he was no more. 

Victor gave orders for the removal of the corpse, and 
hurried away. The surgeon, who had changed countenance 
VoL. III. — F 


122 


THE PARISIANS. 


when he overheard the name in which the dying man had 
addressed De Maul^on, gazed silently after De Maul4on’s 
retreating form, and then, also quitting the dead, rejoined 
the group he had quitted. Some of those who composed it 
acquired evil renown later in the war of the Communists, 
and came to disastrous ends : among that number the Pole 
Loubisky and other members of the Secret Council. The 
Italian Raselli was there too, but, subtler than his French 
confr^res^ he divined the fate of the Communists, and glided 
from it — safe now in his native land, destined there, no 
doubt, to the funereal honors and lasting renown which 
Italy bestows on the dust of her sons who have advocated 
assassination out of love for the human race. 

Amid this group, too, was a National Guard, strayed from 
his proper post, and stretched on the frozen ground, and, 
early though the hour, in the profound sleep of intoxication. 

“ So,” said Loubisky, “ you have found your errand in 
vain. Citizen Le Noy; another victim to the imbecility of 
our generals.” 

“ And partly one of us,” replied the Medecin des Pauvres. 
“ You remember poor Le Eoux, who kept the old haraque 
where the Council of Ten used to meet? Yonder he lies.’' 

“Don’t talk of the Council of Ten. What fools and 
dupes we were made by that vieux gridin Jean Lebeau ! 
How I wish I could meet him again !” 

Gaspard Le Noy smiled sarcastically. “ So much the 
worse for you if you did. A muscular and a ruthless fellow 
is that Jean Lebeau !” Therewith he turned to the drunken 
sleeper and woke him up with a shake and a kick. 


THE PARISIANS. 


123 


“ Armand — Armand Monnier, I say, rise, rub your eyes I 
What if you are called to your post? What if you are 
shamed as a deserter and a coward ?” 

Armand turned, rose with an effort from the recumbent to 
the sitting posture, and stared dizzily in the face of the 
Medecin des Pauvres. 

“ I was dreaming that I had caught by the throat,” said 
Armand, wildly, “the aristo who shot my brother; and lo, 
there were two men, Victor de Mauleon and Jean Lebeau.” 

“ Ah ! there is something in dreams,” said the surgeon. 
“ Once in a thousand times a dream comes true.” 


CHAPTER Y. 

The time now came when all provision of food or of fuel 
failed the modest household of Isaura ; and there was not 
only herself and the Yenosta to feed and warm — there were 
the servants whom they had brought from Italy and had not 
the heart now to dismiss to the certainty of famine. True, 
one of the three, the man, had returned to his native land 
before the commencement of the siege ; but the two women 
had remained. They supported themselves now as they 
could on the meagre rations accorded by the government. 
Still Isaura attended the ambulance to which she was 
attached. From the ladies associated with her she could 
readily have obtained ample supplies ; but they had no con* 


124 


THE PARISIANS. 


ception of her real state of destitution ; and there was a false 
pride generally prevalent among the respectable classes, which 
Isaura shared, that concealed distress lest alms should be 
proffered. 

The destitution of the household had been carefully con- 
cealed from the parents of Gustave Ramea, uuntil, one day, 
Madame Rameau, entering at the hour at which she generally, 
and her husband sometimes, came for a place by the fireside 
and a seat at the board, found on the one only ashes, on the 
other a ration of the black nauseous compound which had 
become the substitute for bread. 

Isaura was absent on her duties at the ambulance hospital, — 
purposely absent, for she shrank from the bitter task of making 
clear to the friends of her betrothed the impossibility of con- 
tinuing the aid to their support which their son had neglected 
to contribute ;. and still more from the comment which she 
knew they would make on his conduct in absenting himself 
so wholly of late, and in the time of such trial and pressure, 
both from them and from herself. Truly, she rejoiced at that 
absence so far as it affected herself. Every hour of the day 
she silently asked her conscience whether she were not now 
absolved from a promise won from her only by an assurance 
that she had power to influence for good the life that now 
voluntarily separated itself from her own. As she had never 
loved Gustave, so she felt no resentment at the indifference 
his conduct manifested. On the contrary, she hailed it as a 
sign that the annulment of their betrothal would be as welcome 
to him as to herself. And if so, she could restore to him the 
sort of compassionate friendship she had learned to cherish in 


THE PARISIANS. 


125 


the hoiir of his illness and repentance. She had resolved to 
seize the first opportunity he afibrded to her of speaking to 
him with frank and truthful plainness. But, meanwhile, her 
gentle nature recoiled from the confession of her resolve to 
appeal to Gustave himself for the rupture of their engage- 
ment. 

Thus the Venosta alone received Madame Rameau ; and 
while that lady was still gazing round her with an emotion 
too deep for immediate utterance, her husband entered with 
an expression of face new to him — the look of a man who 
has been stung to anger and who has braced his mind to some 
stern determination. This altered countenance of the good- 
tempered bourgeois was not, however, noticed by the two 
women. The Venosta did not even raise her eyes to it, as 
with humbled accents she said, “ Pardon, dear Monsieur, 
pardon, Madame, our want of hospitality ; it is not our hearts 
that fail. We kept our state from you as long as we could. 
Now it speaks for itself: ‘ la fame e una hratta festin.' ” 

“ Oh, Madame ! and oh, my poor Isaura !” cried Madame 
Rameau, bursting into tears. “ So we have been all this time 
a burden on you, — aided to bring such want on you ! How 
can we ever be forgiven ? And my son, — to leave us thus, — 
not even to tell us where to find him I” 

“ Ho not degrade us, my wife,” said M. Rameau, with 
unexpected dignity, “by a word to imply that we would 
stoop to sue for support to our ungrateful child. No, we will 
not starve ! I am strong enough still to find food for you. I 
will apply for restoration to the National Guard. They have 
augmented the pay to married men; it is now nearly two 


126 


THE PARISIANS. 


francs and a half a day to a plre de famille^ and on that pay 
we all can at least live. Courage, my wife ! I will go at 
once for employment. Many men older than I am are at 
watch on the ramparts, and will march to the battle on the 
next sortie.” 

“ It shall not be so,” exclaimed Madame Rameau, vehe- 
mently, and winding her arm round her husband’s neck. “ I 
loved my son better than thee once — more the shame to me. 
Now, I would rather lose twenty such sons than peril thy life, 
my Jacques ! Madame,” she continued, turning to the Venosta, 
“thou wert wiser than I. Thou wert ever opposed to the 
union between thy young friend and my son. I felt sore with 
thee for it — a* mother is so selfish when she puts herself in 
the place of her child. I thought that only through marriage 
with one so pure, so noble, so holy, Grustave could be saved 
from sin and evil. I was deceived. A man so heartless to 
his parents, so neglectful of his afiianced, is not to be re- 
deemed. I brought about this betrothal : tell Isaura that I 
release her from it. I have watched her closely since she 
was entrapped into it. I know how miserable the thought of 
it has made her, though, in her sublime devotion to her 
plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the real state 
of her heart. If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would 
the union do ! Tell her this from me. Come, Jacques, come 
away !” 

“Stay, Madame!” exclaimed the Yenosta, her excitable 
nature much aifected by this honest outburst of feeling. “ It 
is true that I did oppose, so far as I could, my poor Piccola^s 
engagement with M. Gustave. But I dare not do your bid 


THE PARISIANS. 


127 


ding. Isaura would not listen to me. And let us be just ; 
M. Gustave may be able satisfactorily to explain bis seeming 
indifference and neglect. His health is always very delicate ; 
perhaps he may be again dangerously ill. He serves in the 
National Guard ; perhaps,” — she paused, but the mother con- 
jectured the word left unsaid, and, clasping her hands, cried 
out in anguish, “Perhaps dead! — and we have wronged him! 
Oh, Jacques, Jacques 1 how shall we find out — how discover 
our boy ? Who can tell us where to search ? at the hospital 
— or in the cemeteries ?” At the last word she dropped into 
a seat, and her whole frame shook with her sobs. 

Jacques approached her tenderly, and, kneeling by her side, 
said — 

“No, m’amiV, comfort thyself, if it be indeed comfort to 
learn that thy son is alive and well. For my part, I know 
not if I would not rather he had died in his innocent child- 
hood. I have seen him — spoken to him. I know where he 
is to be found.” 

“ You do, and concealed it from me? Oh, Jacques !” 

“ Listen to me, wife, and you too, Madame ; for what I 
have to say should be made known to Mademoiselle Cicogna. 
Some time since, on the night of the famous sortie, when at my 
post on the ramparts, I was told that Gustave had joined him- 
self to the most violent of the Red Republicans, and had 
uttered at the Club de la Vengeance sentiments, of which I 
will only say that I, his father and a Frenchman, hung my 
head with shame when they were repeated to me. I resolved 
to go to the club myself. I did. I heard him speak — heard 
him denounce Christianity as the instrument of tyrants.” 


128 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Ah !” cried the two women, with a simultaneous shudder. 

“ When the assembly broke up, I waylaid him at the door. 
I spoke to him seriously. I told him what anguish such 
announcement of blasphemous opinions would inflict on his 
pious mother. I told him I should deem it my duty to 
inform Mademoiselle Cicogna, and warn her against the union 
on which he had told us his heart was bent. He appeared 
sincerely moved by what I said ; implored me to keep silence 
towards his mother and his betrothed, and promised, on that 
condition, to relinquish at once what he* called ‘ his career as 
an orator,’ and appear no more at such execrable clubs. On 
this understanding I held my tongue. Why, with such other 
causes of grief and suffering, should I tell thee, poor wife, 
of a sin that I hoped thy son had repented and would not 
repeat ? And Grustave kept his word. He has never, so far 
as I know, attended, at least spoken, at the Red clubs since 
that evening.” 

“ Thank Heaven so flir !” murmured Madame Rameau. 

“ So far, yes ; but hear more. A little time after I thus 
met him, he changed his lodging, and did not conflde to us 
his new address, giving as a reason to us that he wished to 
avoid all clue to his discovery by that pertinacious Made- 
moiselle Julie.” 

Rameau had here sunk his voice into a whisper, intended 
ojily for his wife ; but the ear of the V enosta was flne enough 
to catch the sound, and she repeated, “ Mademoiselle Julie 1 
Santa Maria ! who is she ?” 

“Oh,” said M. Rameau, with a shrug of his shoulders, 
and with true Parisian sang-froid as to such matters of 


THE PARISIANS. 


129 


morality, “a trifle not worth considering. Of course a good- 
looking gargon like Gustave must have his little afiairs of 
the heart before he settles for life. Unluckily, among those 
of Gustave was one with a violent-tempered girl who perse- 
cuted him when he left her, and he naturally wished to avoid 
all chance of a silly scandal, if only out of respect to the 
dignity of his jiancie. But I found that was not the true 
motive, or at least the only one, for concealment. Prepare 
yourself, my poor wife. Thou hast heard of these terrible 
journals which the dechiance has let loose upon us. Our 
unhappy boy is the principal writer of one of the worst of 
them, under the name of ‘ Diderot le Jeune.’ ” 

“ What !” cried the Venosta. “ That monster ! The good 
Ahbe Vertpre was telling us of the writings with that name 
attached to them. The Abbe himself is denounced by name 
as one of those meddling priests who are to be constrained 
to serve as soldiers or pointed out to the vengeance of the 
canaille. Isaura’s Jiancie a blasphemer !” 

“ Hush, hush !” said Madame Rameau, rising, very pale, 
but self-collected. How do you know this, Jacques?” 

“ From the lips of Gustave himself. I heard first of it 
yesterday from one of the young reprobates with whom ho 
used to be familiar, and who even complimented me on the 
rising fame of my son and praised the eloquence of his 
article that day. But I would not believe him. I bought 
the journal — here it is ; saw the name and address of the 
printer — went this morning to the office — was there told that 
‘ Diderot le Jeune’ was within, revising the press— stationed 
myself by the street-door, and when Gustave came out I 
VOL. III. — F* 9 


130 


THE PARISIANS. 


seized his arm, and asked him to say Yes or No if he waa 
the author of this infamous article, — this which I now hold 
in my hand. He owned the authorship with pride ; talked 
wildly of the great man he was — of the great things he was 
to do ; said that, in hitherto concealing his true name, he had 
done all he could to defer to the bigoted prejudices of his 
parents and his jiancie^ and that if genius, like fire, would 
find its way out, he could not help it; that a time was rapidly 
coming when his opinions would be uppermost; that since 
October the Communists were gaining ascendency, and only 
waited the end of the siege to put down the present govern- 
ment, and with it all hypocrisies and shams, religious or 
social. My wife, he was rude to me, insulting ; but he had 
been drinking — that made him incautious ; and he continued 
to walk by my side towards his own lodging, on reaching which 
he ironically invited me to enter, saying '• I should meet there 
men who would soon argue me out of my obsolete notions. 
You may go to him, wife, now, if you please. I will not, nor 
will I take from him a crust of bread. I came hither, deter- 
mined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her at home. I 
should be a dishonored man if I suffered her to be cheated into 
misery. There, Madame Venosta, there ! Take that journal, 
show it to Mademoiselle, and report to her all I have said.” 

M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, had, in talking, 
worked himself up into positive fury. 

His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, made a piteous 
sign to the Venosta not to say more, and, without other salu- 
tation or adieu, took her husband’s arm, and led him from the 
house. 


THE PARISIANS. 


131 


CHAPTER VI. 

Obtaining from her husband Gustave’s address, Madame 
Rameau hastened to her son’s apartment alone through the 
darkling streets. The house in which he lodged was in a 
different quarter from that in which Isaura had visited him. 
Then, the street selected was still in the centre of the beau 
monde — now, it was within the precincts of that section of 
the many-faced capital in which the beau monde was held in 
detestation or scorn ; still the house had certain pretensions, 
boasting a court-yard and a porter’s lodge. Madame Rameau, 
instructed to mount an second^ found the door ajar, and, 
entering, perceived on the table of the little salon the remains 
of a feast which, however untempting it might have been in 
happier times, contrasted strongly the meagre fare of which 
Gustave’s parents had deemed themselves fortunate to partake 
at the board of his betrotlied ; — remnants of those viands 
which offered to the inquisitive epicure ap experiment in food 
much too costly for the popular stomach — dainty morsels of 
elephant, hippopotamus, and wolf, interspersed with half 
emptied bottles of varied and high-priced wines. Passing 
these evidences of unseasonable extravagance with a mute 
sentiment of anger and disgust, Madame Rameau penetrated 
into a small cabinet, the door of which was also ajar, and saw 
her son stretched on his bed half dressed, breathing heavily 
in the sleep which follows intoxication. She did not attempt 


132 


THE PARISIANS. 


to disturb him. She placed herself quietly by his side, gazing 
mournfully on the face which she had once so proudly con- 
templated, now haggard and faded, — still strangely beautiful, 
though it was the beauty of ruin. 

From time to time he stin*ed uneasily, and muttered broken 
words, in which fragments of his own delicately worded verse 
were incoherently mixed up with ribald slang addressed to 
imaginary companions. In his dreams he was evidently liv- 
ing over again his late revel, with episodical diversions into 
the poet-world, of which he was rather a vagrant nomad than 
a settled cultivator. Then she would silently bathe his fever- 
ish temples with the perfumed water she found on his dress- 
ing-table. And so she watched till, in the middle of the 
night, he woke up, and recovered the possession of his reason 
with a quickness that surprised Madame Rameau. He was, 
indeed, one of those men in whom excess of drink, when 
slept off, is succeeded by extreme mildness, the effect of ner- 
vous exhaustion, and by a dejected repentance, which, to his 
mother, seemed a propitious lucidity of the moral sense. 

Certainly on seeing her he threw himself on her breast 
and began to shed t§ars. Madame Rameau had not the heart 
to reproach him sternly. But by gentle degrees she made 
him comprehend the pain he had given to his father, and the 
destitution in which he had deserted his parents and his af- 
fianced. In his present mood Gustave was deeply affected by 
these representations. He excused himself feebly by dwelling 
on the excitement of the times, the preoccupation of his 
mind, the example of his companions ; but with his excuses 
he mingled passionate expressions of remorse, and before day- 


THE PARISIANS. 


133 


break mother and son were completely reconciled. Then he 
fell into a tranquil sleep ; and Madame Rameau, quite worn 
out, slept also in the chair beside him, her arm around his 
neck. He awoke before she did, at a late hour in the morn- 
ing, and, stealing from her arm, went to \i\& escritoire and 
took forth what money he found there, half of which he 
p3ured into her lap, kissing her till she awoke. 

“ Mother,” he said, “ henceforth I will work for thee and 
my father.. Take this trifle now; the rest I reserve for 
Isaura.” 

“ Joy I I have found my boy again. But Isaura — I fear 
that she will not take thy money, and all thought of her must 
also be abandoned.” 

Gustave had already turned to his looking-glass, and was 
arranging with care his dark ringlets : his personal vanity — 
his remorse appeased by this pecuniary oblation — had revived. 

“ No,” he said, gayly, “ I don’t think I shall abandon her; 
and it is not likely, when she sees and hears me, that she can 
wish to abandon me ! Now let us breakfast, and then I will 
go at once to her.” 

In the mean while, Isaura, on her return to her apartment 
at the wintry nightfall, found a cart stationed at the door, and 
the Venosta on the threshold, superintending the removal of 
various articles of furniture- — indeed, all such articles as were 
not absolutely required. 

“ Oh, Piccola r she said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, 
“I did not expect thee back so, soon. Hush! I have 
made a famous bargain. I have found a broker to buy these 
things, which we don’t want just at present, and can replace by 


134 


THE PARISIANS. 


new and prettier things when the siege is over and we get our 
money. The broker pays down on the nail, and thou wilt not 
go to bed without supper. There are no ills which are not 
more supportable after food.” 

Isaura smiled faintly, kissed the Venosta’s cheek, and 
ascended with weary steps to the sitting-room. There she 
seated herself quietly, looking with abstracted eyes round the 
bare dismantled space by the light of the single candle. 

When the Venosta re-entered, she was followed by the 
servants, bringing in a daintier meal than they had known for 
days— a genuine rabbit, potatoes, marrons glacis^ a bottle of 
wine, and a pannier of wood. The fire was soon lighted, the 
Venosta plying the bellows. It was not till this banquet, of 
which Isaura, faint as she was, scarcely partook, had been 
remitted to the two Italian women-servants, and another log 
been thrown on the hearth, that the Venosta opened the subject 
which was pressing on her heart. She did this with a joyous 
smile, taking both Isaura’s hands in her own, and stroking 
them fondly. 

“ My child, I have such good news for thee I Thou hast 
escaped— thou art free !” and then she related all that M. 
Rameau had said, and finished by producing the copy of 
Gustave’s unhallowed journal. 

When she had read the latter, which she did with com- 
pressed lips and varying color, the girl fell on her knees — not 
to thank Heaven that she would now escape a union from 
which her soul so recoiled — not that she was indeed free, — but 
to pray, with tears rolling down her cheeks, that God would 
yet save to Himself, and to good ends, the soul that she had 


THE PAEISIANS. 


135 


failed to bring to Him. All previous irritation against 
Gustave was gone : all bad melted into an ineffable com- 
passion. 


CHAPTEK VIL 

When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by tbo 
servant into Isaura’g salon, its desolate condition, stripped of 
all its pretty feminine elegancies, struck bim with a sense of 
discomfort to bimself wbicb superseded any more remorseful 
sentiment. Tbe day was intensely cold : tbe single log on 
tbe beartb did not burn ; there were only two or three 
chairs in the room; even the carpet, which had been of 
gayly-colored Aubusson,. was gone. His teeth chattered ; 
and he only replied by a dreary nod to the servant, who 
informed him that Madame Venosta was gone out and 
Mademoiselle had not yet quitted her own room. 

If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau’s 
stamp associates with love of woman, it is a certain sort of 
elegant surroundings, — a pretty boudoir, a cheery hearth, an 
easy fauteuil. In the absence of such attributes, fugit 
retro Venusr If the Englishman invented the word com- 
fort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly comprehends the 
thing. And he resents the loss of it in any house where he 
has been accustomed to look for it, as a personal wrong to his 
feelings. 

Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied himself with 
Kindling the log, and muttering, “ Par tons les diahles. quel 


136 


THE PARISIANS. 


cTiien de rhume je vais attraper He turned as he heard 
the rustle of a robe and a light slow step. Isaura stood 
before him. Her aspect startled him. He had come pre- 
pared to expect grave displeasure and a frigid reception. But 
the expression of Isaura’s face was more kindly, more gentle, 
more tender, than he had seen it since the day she had ac- 
cepted his suit. 

Knowing from his mother what his father had said to his 
prejudice, he thought within himself, “ After all, the poor 
girl loves me better than I thought. She is sensible and en- 
lightened \ she cannot pretend to dictate an opinion to a man 
like me.” 

He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and 
took her hand, which she yielded to him quietly, led her 
to one of the few remaining chairs, and seated himself beside 
her. 

“ Dear Isaura,” he said, talking rapidly all the while he 
performed this ceremony, “ I need not assure you of my utter 
ignorance of the state to which the imbecility of our govern- 
ment, and the cowardice, or rather the treachery, of our 
generals, have reduced you. I only heard of it late last night 
from my mother. I hasten to claim my right to share witli 
you the humble resources which I have saved by the intel- 
lectual labors that have absorbed all such moments as my 
military drudgeries left to the talents which, even at such a 
moment, paralyzing minds less energetic, have sustained me:” 
— and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and silver 
on the table beside her chair. 

“ Gustave,” then said Isaura, “ I am well pleased that you 


THE PARISIANS. 


137 


thus prove that I was not mistaken when I thought and said 
that, despite all appearances, all errors, your heart was good. 
Oh, do but follow its true impulses, and ” 

“ Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet,’’ interrupted Gus- 
tave, with a fervor which sounded somewhat theatrical and 
hollow. 

The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly ; but Gustave 
did not like the smile. 

“Poor Gustave,” she said, with a melancholy pathos in her 
soft voice, “ do you not understand that the time has come 
when such commonplace compliments ill suit our altered 
positions to each other ? Nay, listen to me patiently ; and 
let not my words in this last interview pain you to recall. If 
either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily contracted, 
it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagina- 
tion the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such 
earnestness that on my consent to our union depended your 
health, your life, your career — that if I withheld that consent 
you were lost, and in despair would seek distraction from 
thought in all from which your friends, your mother, the 
duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the 
ends of God, should withhold and save you — when you said 
all this, and I believed it, I felt as if Heaven commanded 
me not to desert the soul which appealed to me in the 
crisis of its struggle and peril. Gustave, I repent ; I was to 
blame.” 

“ How to blame ?” 

“ I overrated my power oyer your heart : I overrated still 
more, perhaps, my power over my own.” 


138 


THE PARISIANS. 


“Ah, your own! I understand now. You did not love 
me?” 

“ I never said that I loved you in the sense in which you 
use the word. I told you that the love which you have 
described in your verse, and which,” she added, falteringly, 
with heightened color and with hands tightly clasped, “ I 
have conceived possible in my dreams, it was not mine to 
give. You declared you were satisfied with such affection 
as I could bestow. Hush I let me go on. You said that 
affection would increase, would become love, in proportion as 
I knew you more. It has not done so. Nay, it passed away, 
even before, in this time of trial and grief, I became aware 
how different from the love you professed was the neglect 
which needs no excuse, for it did not pain me.” 

“You are cruel indeed. Mademoiselle.” 

“ No, indeed, I am kind. I wish you to feel no pang at 
our parting. Truly I had resolved, when the siege terminated 
and the time to speak frankly of our engagement came, to 
tell you that I shrank from the thought of a union between 
us, and that it was for the happiness of both that our 
promises should be mutually canceled. The moment has 
come sooner than I thought. Even had I loved you, Gus- 
tave, as deeply as — as well as the beings of Romance love, I 
would not dare to wed one who calls upon mortals to deny 
God, demolish His altars, treat His worship as a crime. No; 
I would sooner die of a broken heart, that I might the 
sooner be one of those souls privileged to pray the Diviue' 
Intercessor for merciful light on those beloved and left dark 
on earth.” 


THE PARISIANS. 


139 


^‘Isaura!” exclaimed Gustave, his mobile temperament 
impressed, not by the words of Isaura, but by the passionate 
earnestness with which they were uttered, and by the ex- 
quisite spiritual beauty which her face took from the com- 
bined sweetness and fervor of its devout expression, — 
“ Isaura, T merit your censure, your sentence of condemna- 
tion ; but do not ask me to give back your plighted troth. I 
have not the strength to do so. More than ever, more than 
when first pledged to me, I need the aid, the companionship, 
of my guardian angel. You were that to me once ; abandon 
me not now. In these terrible times of revolution, excitable 
natures catch madness from each other. A writer in the 
heat of his passion says much that he does not mean to be 
literally taken, which in cooler moments he repents and 
retracts. Consider, too, the pressure of want, of hunger. 
It is the opinions that you so condemn which alone at this 
moment supply bread to the writer. But say you will yet 
pardon me, — yet give me trial if I offend no more — if I 
withdraw my aid to any attacks on your views, your religion 
— if I say, ‘ Thy God shall be my God, and thy people shall 
be my people.’ ” 

“ Alas !” said Isaura, softly, “ ask thyself if those be words 
which I can believe again. Hush !” she continued, checking 
his answer with a more kindling countenance and more 
impassioned voice. “ Are they, after all, the words that man 
should address to woman ? Is it on the strength of woman 
that man should rely? Is it to her that he should say, 
‘ Dictate my opinions on all that belongs to the mind of man ; 
change the doctrines that I have thoughtfully formed and 


140 


THE PARISIANS. 


honestly advocate ; teach me how to act on earth, clear all my 
doubts as to my hopes of heaven’ ? No, Gustave ; in this task 
man never should repose on woman. Thou art honest at this 
moment, my poor friend; but could I believe thee to-day, 
thou wouldst laugh to-morrow at what woman can be made to 
believe.” 

Stung to the quick by the truth of Isaura’s accusation, 
Gustave exclaimed with vehemence, “ All that thou sayest is 
false, and thou knowest it. The influence of woman on man 
for good or for evil defies reasoning. It does mould his deeds 
on earth ; it does either make or mar all that future which 
lies between his life and his gravestone, and of whatsoever 
may lie beyond the grave. Give me up now, and thou art 
responsible for me, for all I do, it may be against all that thou 
deemest holy. Keep thy troth yet awhile, and test me. If I 
come to thee showing how I could have injured, and how for 
thy dear sake I have spared, nay, aided, all that thou dost 
believe and reverence, then wilt thou dare to say, ‘ Go thy 
ways alone — I forsake thee’ ?” 

Isaura turned aside her face, but she held out her hand — 
it was as cold as death. He knew that she had so far yielded, 
and his vanity exulted : he smiled in secret triumph- as he 
pressed his kiss on that icy hand and was gone. 

“ This is duty — it must be duty,” said Isaura to herself. 
“ But where is the buoyant delight that belongs to a duty 
achieved ?— where ? oh, where ?” And then she stole with 
drooping head and heavy step into her own room, fell on her 
knees, and prayed. 


THE PARISIANS. 


141 


CHAPTER VIIL 

In vain per«»jns, be they male or female, there is a com- 
placent self-satisfaction in any momentary personal success, 
however little that success may conduce to — nay, however 
much it may militate against — the objects to which their 
vanity itself devotes its more permanent desires. A vain 

woman may be very anxious to win A , the magnificent, 

as a partner for life, and yet feel a certain triumph when a 
glance of her eye has made an evening’s conquest of the 

pitiful B , although by that achievement she incurs the 

imminent hazard of losing A altogether. So, when Gus- 

tave Rameau quitted Isaura, his first feeling was that of 
triumph. His eloquence had subdued her w,ill : she had not 
finally discarded him. But, as he wandered abstractedly in 
the biting air, his self-complacency was succeeded by mortifi- 
cation and discontent. He felt that he had committed himself 
to promises which he was by no means prepared to keep. 
True, the promises were vague in words ; but in substance 
they were perfectly clear — “ to spare, nay, to aid all that Isaura 
esteemed and reverenced.” How was this possible to him ? 
How could he suddenly change the whole character of his 
writings ? — how become the defender of marriage and property, 
of church and religion ? — how proclaim himself so utter an 
apostate? If he did, how become a leader of the fresh 
revolution? how escape being its victim? Cease to write 


142 


THE PARISIANS. 


altogether? But then how live? His pen was his sole 
subsistence, save thirty sous a day as a National Guard — 
thirty sous a day to him who, in order to be Sybarite in 
tastes, was Spartan in doctrine. Nothing better just at that 
moment than Spartan doctrine — “ Live on black broth and 
fight the enemy.” And the journalists in vogue so thrived 
upon that patriotic sentiment, that they were the last persons 
compelled to drink the black broth or to fight the enemy. 

“ Those women are such idiots when they meddle in poli- 
tics,” grumbled between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate 
of Woman’s Bights on all matters of love. “ And,” he con- 
tinued, soliloquizing, “ it is not as if the girl had any large or 
decent dot ; it is not as if she said, ‘ In return for the sacrifice 
of your popularity, your prospects, your opinions, I give you 
not only a devoted heart, but an excellent table and a capital 
fire and plenty of pocket-money.’ Sacre bleu ! when I think 
of that frozen salon, and possibly the leg of a mouse for 
dinner, and a virtuous homily by way of grace, the prospect 
is not alluring ; and the girl herself is not so pretty as she 
was — grown very thin. Sur mon dme, I think she asks too 
much — far more than she is worth. No, no ; I had better 
have accepted her dismissal. Elle rCest pas digne de moV^ 

Just as he arrived at that conclusion, Gustave Bameau felt 
the touch of a light, a soft, a warm, yet a firm hand, on his 
arm. He turned, and beheld the face of the woman whom 
through so many dreary vv^eeks he had sought to shun — the 
face of Julie Caumartin. Julie was not, as Savarin had seen 
her, looking pinched and wan, with faded robes, nor, as when 
met in the cafi by Lemercier, in the faded robes of a theatre. 


THE PARISIANS. 


143 


J ulie never looked more beautiful, more radiant, than she did 
now ; and there was a wonderful heartfelt fondness in her 
voice when she cried, “ Mon homme 1 mon Jiommo ! sent 
homme au monde d mon coeur^ Gustave^ cJiiri adore I I 
have found thee — at last — at last !” Gustave gazed upon 
her, stupefied. Involuntarily his eye glanced from the fresh- 
ness of bloom in her face, which the intense cold of the 
atmosphere only seemed to heighten into purer health, to her 
dress, which was new and handsome — ^black — he did not 
know that it was mourning — ^the cloak trimmed with costly 
sables. Certainly it was no mendicant for alms who thus 
reminded the shivering Adonis of the claims of a pristine 
Venus. He stammered out her name — “ Julie I” — and then 
he stopped. 

“ Oui^ ta Julie ! Petit ingrat ! how I have sought for thee ! 
how I have hungered for the sight of thee ! That monster 
Savarin ! he would not give me any news of thee. That is 
ages ago. But at least Frederic Lemercier, whom I saw 
since, promised to remind thee that I lived still. He did not 
do so, or I should have seen thee — n' est-ce pas 

“ Certainly, certainly — only — cliere amie — ^you know that — 
that — as I before announced to thee, I — I — was engaged in 
marriage — and — ^and ’ ’ 

“ But are you married?” 

“ No, no. Hark I Take care — is not that the hiss of an 
ohusr 

“ What then ? Let it come. Would it might slay us 
both while my hand is in thine !” 

, “ Ah I” muttered Gustave, inwardly, “ what a difference ! 


144 


THE PARISIANS. 


This is love ! No preaching here ! Elle est plus digine de 
moi que Vautre^ 

“ No,” he said, aloud, “ I am not married. Marriage is at 
best a pitiful ceremony. But if you wished for news of me, 
surely you must have heard of my effect as an orator not 
despised in the Salle Favre. Since, I have withdrawn from 
that arena. But as a journalist I flatter niyself that I have 
had a beau succls." 

“ Doubtless, doubtless, my Gustave, my Poet I Wherever 
thou art, thou must be first among men. But, alas ! it is my 
fault — my misfortune. I have not been in the midst of a 
world that perhaps rings of thy name.” 

“ Not my name. Prudence compelled me to conceal that. 
Still, Genius pierces under any name. You might have 
discovered me under my nom de plume.” 

“Pardon* me — I was always htte. But, oh 1 for so many 
weeks I was so poor — so destitute. I could go nowhere, 
except — don’t be ashamed of me — except ” 

“Yes? Goon.” 

“ Except where I could get some money. At first to dance 
— ^you remember my bolero. Then I got a better engagement. 
Do you not remember that you taught me to recite verses ? 
Had it been for myself alone, I might have been contented to 
starve. Without thee, what was life ? But thou wilt recol- 
lect Madeleine, the old bonne who lived with me. Well, she 

had attended and cherished me since I was so high lived 

with my mother. Mother! no; it seems that Madame Sur- 
ville was not my mother, after all. But of course I could not 
let my old Madeleine starve; and therefore, with a heart 


THE PARISIANS. 


145 


heavy as lead, I danced and declaimed. My heart was not so 
heavy when I recited tliy songs.” 

“ My songs ! Paiivre angeV' exclaimed the Poet. 

“And then, too, I thought, ‘Ah! this dreadful siege! He, 
too, may be poor — he may know want and hunger and so all 
I could save from Madeleine I put into a box for thee, in 
case thou shouldst come back to me some day. Mon homme^ 
how could I go to the Salle Favre? How could I read jour- 
nals, Gustave? But thou art not married, Gustave? Parole 
d'honneur 

Parole d'honneur ! What does that matter?” 

“Everything! Ah! I am not so mecliante^so mauvaise 
tete^ as I was some months ago. If thou wert married, I 
should say, ‘ Blessed and sacred be thy wife ! Forget me.’ 
But, as it is, one word more. Dost thou love the young lady, 
whoever she be ? or does she love thee so well that it would 
be sin in thee to talk trifles to Julie ? Speak as honestly as 
if thou wert not a poet.” 

“ Honestly, she never said she loved me. I never thought 
she did. But, you see, I was very ill, and my parents and 
friends and my physician said that it was right for me to 
arrange my life, and marry, and so forth. And the girl had 
money, and was a good match. In short, the thing was 
settled. But oh, Julie, she never learned my songs by heart! 
She did not love as thou didst, and still dost. And — ahl 
well — now that we meet again — now that I look in thy face 

— now that I hear thy voice No, I do not love her as I 

loved, and might yet love, thee. But — but ” 

“ Well, but? Oh, I guess. Thou seest me well dressed, no 
VoL. III.— o 10 


146 


THE PARISIANS. 


longer dancing and declaiming at cafis; and thou thiukest 
that Julie has disgraced herself? she is unfaithful?” 

Gustave had not anticipated that frankness, nor was the 
idea which it expressed uppermost in his mind when he said, 

“ But, hut ” There were many huts^ all very confused, 

struggling through his mind as he spoke. However, he 
answered as a Parisian skeptic, not ill bred, naturally would 
answer — 

“My dear friend, my dear child” (the Parisian is very 
fond of the word child or enfant in addressing a woman), “ I 
have never seen thee so beautiful as thou art now ; and when 
thou tellest me that thou art no longer poor, and the proof of 
what thou sayest is visible in the furs, which, alas ! I cannot 
give thee, what am I to think ?” 

“ Oh, mon homme^ mon Tiomme ! thou art very spirituely 
and that is why I loved thee. I am very hete^ and that is 
excuse enough for thee if thou couldst not love me. But canst 
thou look me in the face and not know that my eyes could 
not meet thine as they do, if I had been faithless to thee, even 
in a thought, when I so boldly touched thine arm ? Viens 
cTiez moi; come and let me explain all. Only — only, let me 
repeat, if another has rights over thee which forbid thee to 
come, say so kindly, and I will never trouble thee again.” 

Gustave had been hitherto walking slowly by the side of 
Julie, amidst the distant boom of the besiegers’ cannon, 
while the short day began to close; and along the dreary 
boulevards sauntered idlers turning to look at the young, 
beautiful, well-dressed woman who seemed in such contrast 
to the capital whose former luxuries the “ Ondine” of im- 


THE PARISIANS. 


147 


perial Paris represented. He now offered his arm to Julie, 
and, quickening his pace, said, “ There is no reason why I 
should refuse to attend thee home and listen to the explana- 
tions thou dost generously condescend to volunteer.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

“Ah, indeed! what a difference! what a difference!” 
said Gustave to himself when he entered Julie’s apartment. 
In her palmier days, when he had first made her acquaint- 
ance, the apartment no doubt had been infinitely more 
splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and flowers and 
nieknacks ; but never had it seemed so cheery and comfort- 
able and home-like as now. What a contrast to Isaura’s dis-. 
mantled chilly salon! She drew him towards the hearth, 
on which, blazing though it was, she piled fresh billets, 
seated him in the easiest of easy-chairs, knelt beside him, 
and chafed his numbed hands in hers ; and, as her bright 
eyes fixed tenderly on his, she looked so young and so inno- 
cent ! You would not then have called her the “ Ondine cf 
Paris.” 

But when, a little while after, revived by the genial 
warmth and moved by the charm of her beauty, Gustave 
passed his arm round her neck and sought to draw her on 
his lap, she slid from his embrace, shaking her head gently, 
and seated herself, with a pretty air of ceremonious decorum, 
at a little distance. 


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Gustave looked at her amazed. 

“ Causons^'' said she, gravely : “ thou wouldst know why I 
am so well dressed, so comfortably lodged, and I am longing 
to explain to thee ail. Some days ago I had just finished my 

performance at the Cafe , and was putting on my shawl, 

when a tall Monsieur, fort hel homme^ with the air of a grand 
seigneur^ entered the cafi^ and, approaching me politely, said, 

‘ I think I have the honor to address Mademoiselle Julie Cau- 
martin ?’ ‘ That is my name,’ I said, surprised ; and, looking 
at him more intently, I recognized his face. He had come 
into the cafe a few days before with thine old acquaintance 
Frederic Lemercier, and stood by when I asked Frederic to 
give me news of thee. ‘ Mademoiselle,’ he continued, with a 
serious melancholy smile, ‘ I shall startle you when I say that 
I am appointed to act as your guardian by the last request of 
your mother.’ ^ Of Madame Surville ?’ ‘ Madame Surville 
adopted you, but was not your mother. We cannot talk at 
ease here. Allow me to request that you will accompany me 

to Monsieur N , the avoue. It is not very far from this ; 

and by the way I will tell you some news that may sadden, 
and some news that may rejoice.’ 

“ There was an earnestness in the voice and look of this 
Monsieur that impressed me. He did not offer me his arm ; 
but I walked by his side in the direction he chose. As we 
walked, he told me in very few words that my mother had 
been separated from her husband, arid for certain family 
reasons had found it so difficult to rear and provide for me 
herself that she had accepted the offer of Madame Surville 
to adopt me as her own child. While he spoke, there came 


THE PARISIANS. 


149 


dimly back to me the remembrance of a lady who had taken 
me from my first home, where I had been, as I understood, at 
nurse, and left me with poor dear Madame Surville, saying, 
‘This is henceforth your mamma.’ I never again saw that 
lady. It seems that many years afterwards my true mother 
desired to regain me. Madame Surville was then dead. She 
failed to trace me out, owing, alas ! to my own faults and 
change of name. She then entered a nunnery, but, before 
doing so, assigned a sum of one hundred thousand francs to 
this gentleman, who was distantly connected with her, with 
full power to him to take it to himself, or give it to my use 
should he discover me, at his discretion. ‘ I ask you,’ con- 
tinued the Monsieur, ‘ to go with me to Monsieur N ’s, be- 

cause the sum is still in his hands. He will confirm my 
statement. All that I have now to say is this : If you accept 
my guardianship, if you obey implicitly my advice, I shall 
consider the interest of this sum which has accumulated since 

deposited with Monsieur N due to you ; and the capital 

will be your dot on marriage, if the marriage be with my 
consent.’ ” 

Gustave had listened very attentively, and without inter- 
rupt' on, till now — when he looked up, and said, wifeli his 
customary sneer, “ Did your Monsieur, fort hel liomme, you 
say, inform you of the value of the advice, rather of the com- 
mands, you were implicitly to obey ?” 

“ Yes,” answered J ulie ; “ not then, but later. Let me go on. 

We arrive d at Monsieur N ’s, an elderly grave man. He 

said that all he knew was that he held the money in trust for 
the Monsieur with me, to be given to him, with the accumu- 


150 


THE PARISIANS. 


lations of interest, on the death of the lady who had deposited 
it. If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the 
money, they were not known to him. All he had to do was 
to transfer it absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the 
lady’s death. So you see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could 
have kept all from me if he had liked.” 

“ Your Monsieur is very generous. Perhaps you will now 
tell me his name.” 

“ No ; he forbids me to do it yet.” 

“ And he took this apartment for you, and gave you the 
money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah! mwn 
enfant^ why try to deceive me ? Do I not know my Paris ? 
A fort hel liomme does not make himself guardian to a forte 
helle file so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin 
without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like 
himself.” 

Julie’s eyes flashed. Ah, Gustave! ah. Monsieur!” she 
said, half angrily, half plaintively, “ I see that my guardian 
knew you better than I did. Never mind; I will not re- 
proach. Thou hast the right to despise me.” 

“P.ardon ! I did not mean to offend thee,” said Gustave, 
somewhat disconcerted. “ But own that thy story is strange. 
And this guardian, who knows me better than thou — does he 
know me at all ? Didst thou speak to him of me?” 

“ How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in 
which he takes an active part, makes his life uncertain from 
day to day. He wished to complete the trust bequeathed to 
him by seeing me safe in the love of some worthy man who’.’ 
— she paused for a moment with an expression of compressed 


THE PARISIANS. 


151 


anguish, and then hurried on — “ who would recognize what 
was good in me, — would never reproach me for — for — the 
past. I then said that my heart was thine ; I could never 
marry any one but thee.” 

“ Marry me !” faltered Gustave — “ marry !” 

“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, 
“ he said thou wert not the husband he would choose for me ; 
that thou wert not — no, I cannot wound thee by repeating 
what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me think of thee 
no more. I said again. That is impossible.” 

“ But,” resumed Bameau, with an affected laugh, “ why 
think of anything so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest 

me, and ” He approached again, seeking to embrace 

her. 

She recoiled. “ No, Gustave, no. I have sworn — sworn 
solemnly by the memory of my lost mother — that I will never 
sin again. I will never be to thee other than thy friecd — 
or thy wife.” 

Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took 
him wholly by surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, 
and the old bonne ushered in Victor de.Maul4on. He halted 
at the threshold, and his brow contracted. 

“So you have already broken faith with me. Made- 
moiselle?” 

“ No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried Julie, pas- 
sionately. “ I told you that I would not seek to find out 
Monsieur Bameau. I did not seek, but I met him unex- 
pectedly. I owed to him an explanation. I invited him 
here to give that explanation. Without it, what would he 


152 


THE PARISIANS. 


have thought of me? Now he may go, and I will nevei 
admit him again without your sanction.” 

The Vicomte turned his stern look upon Gustave, who, 
though, as we know, not wanting in personal courage, felt 
cowed by his false position ; and his eye fell, quailed before 
De Mauleon’s gaze. 

“ Leave us for a few minutes alone, Mademoiselle,” said 
the Yicomte. “ Nay, Julie,” he added, in softened tones, 
“fear nothing. I, too, owe explanation — friendly explana- 
tion — to M. Rameau.” 

With his habitual courtesy towards women, he extended 
his hand to Julie and led her from the room. Then, closing 
the door, he seated himself, and made a sign to Gustave to 
do the same. 

“ Monsieur,” said De Mauleon, “ excuse me if I detain 
you. A very few words will suffice for our present interview. 
I take it for granted that Mademoiselle has told you that she 
is no child of Madame Surville’s ; that her own mother be- 
queathed her to my protection and guardianship, with a 
modest fortune which is at my disposal to give or withhold. 
The little I have seen already of Mademoiselle impresses me 
with sincere interest in her fate. I look with compassion on 
what she may have been in the past ; I anticipate with hope 
what she may be in the future. I do not ask you to see her 
in either with my eyes. I say frankly that it is my inten- 
tion, and, I may add, my resolve, that the ward thus to 
my charge shall be henceforth safe from the temptations that 
have seduced her poverty, her inexperience, her vanity if you 
will, but have not yet corrupted her heart. Bref^ I must 


THE PARISIANS. 


153 


request you to give me your word of honor that you will 
hold no further communication with her. I can allow no 
sinister influence to stand between her fate and honor.” 

“ You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte,” said Kameau, 
“and I give the promise you exact.” He added, feelingly, 
“ It is true her heart has never been corrupted. That is good, 
affectionate, unselfish as a child’s. J'ai Vlwnneur Je vons 
saluer^ M. le Yicomte.” 

He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were 
in his eyes as he passed by He Maul4on and gained the ante- 
room. There a side-door suddenly opened, and Julie’s face> 
anxious, eager, looked forth. 

Gustave paused ; “ Adieu, Mademoiselle ! Though we may 
never meet again, — though our fates divide us,— believe me 
that I shall ever cherish your memory — and ” 

The girP interrupted him, impulsively seizing his arm, and 
looking him in the face with a wild fixed stare. 

“ Hush I dost thou mean to say that we are parted, — 
parted forever ?” 

“Alas!” said Gustave, “what option is before us?^ Your 
guardian rightly forbids my visits; 'and, even were I free to 
offer you my hand, you yourself say that I am not a suitor 
he would approve.” 

Julie turned her eyes towards He Maul4on, who, following 
Gustave into the anteroom, stood silent and impassivej lean- 
ing against the wall. 

He now understood and replied to the pathetic appeal in 
the girl’s eyes. 

“ My young ward,” he said, “ M. Kameau expresses him- 

G* 


154 


THE PARISIANS. 


self with propriety and truth. Suffer him to depart. He 
belongs to the former life; reconcile yourself to the new.” 

He advanced to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave 
to depart. But as he approached Julie she uttered a weak 
piteous wail, and fell at his feet senseless. Be Mauleon raised 
and carried her into her room, where he left her to the care 
of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom, he found 
Gustave still lingering by the outer door. 

“ You will pardon me, Monsieur,” he said to the Vicomte, 

“ but in fact I feel so uneasy, so unhappy. Has she ? 

You see, you see that there is danger to her health, perhaps 
to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture be- 
tween us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength to 
keep my promise.” 

Be Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. Then he 
said in a whisper, “ Come back into the salon. Let us talk 
frankly.” 


CHAPTEB X. 

“ M. Bameau,” said Be Maul4on, when the two men had 
reseated themselves in the sa?on, “ I will honestly say that 
my desire is to rid myself as soon as I can of the trust of 
guardian to this young lady. Playing as I do with fortune, 
my only stake against her favors is my life. I feel as if it 
were my duty to see that Mademoiselle is not left alone and 
friendless in the world at my decease. I have in my mind 


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155 


for lier a husband that I think in every way suitable : a 
handsome and brave young fellow in my battalion, of respect- 
able birth, without any living relations to consult as to his 
choice. I have reason to believe that if Julie married him 
she need never fear a reproach as to her antecedents. Her 
dot would suffice to enable him to realize his own wish of a 
country town in Normandy. And in that station Paris and 
its temptations would soon pass from the poor child’s thoughts, 
as an evil dream. But I cannot dispose of her hand without 
her own consent; and if she is to be reasoned out of her fancy 
for you, I have no time to devote to the task. I come to the 
point. You are not the man I would choose for her husband. 
But, evidently, you are the man she would choose. Are you 
disposed to marry her? You hesitate, very naturally; I have 
no right to demand an immediate answer to a question so 
serious. Perhaps you will think over it, and let me know in 
a day or two ? I take it for granted that if you were, as I 
heard, engaged before the siege to marry the Signora Cicogna, 
that engagement is annulled.” 

“ Why take it for granted ?” asked Gustave, perplexed. 

‘‘Simply because I find you here. Nay, spare explanations 
and excuses. I quite understand that you were invited to 
come. But a man solemnly betrothed to a demohclle like the 
Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity and peril, 
could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the in- 
vitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, 
as is Mademoiselle Julie ; and, on witnessing the passionate 
strength of that attachment, say that he cannot keep a prom- 
ise not to repeat his visits. But if I mistake, and you are 


156 


THE PARISIANS. 


still betrothed to the Signorina, of course all discussion is at 
an end.” 

Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in much be- 
wildered doubt. 

The practiced observer of men’s characters, and of shilling 
phases of mind, glanced at the poor poet’s perturbed counte- 
nance with a half-smile of disdain. 

“It is for you to judge how far the very love to you so 
ingenuously evinced by my ward — how far the reasons 
against marriage with one whose antecedents expose her to 
reproach — should influence one of your advanced opinions 
upon social ties. Such reasons do not appear to have with 
artists the same weight they have with the bourgeoisie. I have 
but to add that the husband of Julie will receive with her 
hand a dot of nearly one hundred and twenty thousand francs ; 
and I have reason to believe that that fortune will be increased 
— how much I cannot guess — when the cessation of the siege 
will allow communication with England. One word more. I 
should wish to rank the husband of my ward in the number 
of my friends. If he did not oppose the political opinions 
with which I identify my own career, I should be pleased to 
make any rise in the world achieved by me assist to the 
raising of himself. But my opinions, as during the time we 
were brought together you were made aware, are those of a 
practical man of the world, and have nothing in common 
with Communists, Socialists, Internationalists, or whatever 
sect would place the aged societies of Europe in Medea’s 
caldron of youth. At a moment like the present, fanatics 
and dreamers so abound, that the number of such sinners 


THE PARISIANS. 


•l57 

will necessitate a general amnesty when- order is restored. 
What a poet so young as you may have written or said at 
such a time will be -readily forgotten and forgiven a year or 
two hence, provided he does not put his notions into violent 
action. But if you choose to* persevere in the views you now 
advocaie, so be iit. They will not make, poor Julie less a 
believer in your wisdom and genius. ^ Only they will separate 
you from me, and a day may come when I should have the 
painful duty of ordering you to be shot — DU meliora. Think 
over all I have thus frankly said. Give me your answer 
within forty-eight hours ; and meanwhile hold no communica- 
tion with my ward. I have the honor to wish you good-day.” 

: / ; I ; 


. - CHAPTER XL . 

I ( 

The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting 
Julie’s apartment, again found himself in the streets. His 
thoughts .were troubled and confused. He was the more 
affected by Julie’s impassioned love for him, by the contrast 
with Isaura’s words and manner in their recent interview. 
His own ancient fancy for the “ Ondine of Paris” became 
revived by the difficulties between their ancient intercourse 
which her unexpected scruples and Be Mauleon’s guardian- 
ship interposed. A witty writer thus defines une passion, 
une caprice injiammee par des obstacles^ In the ordinary 
times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable 
position in the heau monde, would not have admitted any 


158 


THE PARISIANS. 


considerations to compronaise his station by marriage with 
a figurante. But now the wild political doctrines he had 
embraced separated his ambition from that heau mondc^ and 
combined it with ascendency over the revolutionists of the 
populace — a direction which he must abandon if he con- 
tinued his suit to Isaura. Then, too, the immediate possession 
of Julie’s dot was not without temptation to a man who was 
so fond of his personal comforts, and who did not see where 
to turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura’s “ prejudices,” he 
abandoned his profits as a writer in the revolutionary press. 
The inducements for withdrawal from the cause he had 
espoused, held out to him with so haughty a coldness by De 
Mauleon, were not wholly without force, though they irri- 
tated his self-esteem. He was dimly aware of the Vicomte’s 
masculine talents for public life ; and the high reputation he 
had already acquired among military authorities, and even 
among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had weight 
upon Gustave’s impressionable temperament. But though De 
Mauleon’s implied advice here coincided in much with the 
tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it alienated him more 
from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to him the for- 
tune which would enable him to suspend his lucubrations, 
watch the turn of events, and live at ease in the mean while ; 
and the dot to be received with De Maul4on’s ward had those 
advantages. 

While thus meditating, Gustave turned into one of the 
cantines still open, to brighten his intellect with a petit verre^ 
and there he found the two colleagues in the extinct Council 
of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar Ferrier. With the last of 


THE PARISIANS. 


159 


these revolutionists Gustave had become intimately lie. They 
wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a dis- 
traction from his self-conflict which Edgar ofiered him in a 
dinner at the Cafe Riche, which still ofiered its hospitalities 
at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circu- 
lated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, 
for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet- 
dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? 

Es-tu fou d'en doider?^' cried Edgar. “What a sublime 
occasion to manifest thy scorn of the miserable hanaliUs of 
the bourgeoisie I It will but increase thy moral power over 
the people. And then think of the money. What an aid to 
the cause I What a capital for the launch! — journal all 
thine own 1 Resides, when our principles triumph — as 
triumph they must — what would be marriage but a brief 
and futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou hast 
cause to complain of thy wife or chafe at the bond? Only 
'get the dot into thine own hands. E amour passe — reste la 
cassette." 

Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame 
Rameau to revolt at the precise words in which the counsel 
was given, still, as the fumes of the punch yet more addled 
his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable ; and in that sort 
of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some ex- 
citable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night 
leaning on the arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on 
going out of his way to pass the house in which Isaura 
lived, and, pausing under her window, gasped out some 
verses of a wild song, then much in vogue, among the votaries 


160 


THE PARISIANS. 


of Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society 
deems sacred was reviled in the grossest ribaldry. Happily, 
Isaura’s ear heard it not. The girl was kneeling by her bed- 
side, absorbed in prayer. 


CHAPTER XIL 

Three days after the evening thus spent by Gustave 
Rameau, Isaura was startled by a visit from M. de Maul^on. 
She had not seen him since the commencement of the siege, 
and she did not recognize him at first glance in his military 
uniform. 

“ I trust you will pardon my intrusion. Mademoiselle,” he 
said, in the low sweet voice habitual to him in his gentler 
moods, “ but I thought it became me to announce to you the 
decease of one who, I fear, did not discharge with much 
kindness the duties her connection with you imposed. Your 
father s second wife, afterwards Madame Selby, is no more. 
She died some days since, in a convent to which she had 
retired,” 

Isaura had no cause to mourn the dead, but she felt a 
shock in the suddenness of this information; and, in that 
sweet spirit of womanly compassion which entered so largely 
into her character, and made a part of her genius itself, she 
murmured tearfully, The poor Signora ! Why could I not 
have been with her in illness ? She might then have learned 


THE PARISIANS. 


161 


to love me. And she died -in a convent, you say? Ah, her 
religion was then sincere ! Her end was peaceful ?” 

“ Jjet us not doubt that, Mademoiselle. Certainly she lived 
to regret any former errors, and her last thought was directed 
towards such atonement as might be in her power. And it 
is that desire of atonement which now strangely mixes me up, 
Mademoiselle, in your destinies. In that desire for atone- 
ment, she left to my charge, as a kinsman distant indeed, 
but still, perhaps, the nearest with whom she was personally 
acquainted — a young ward. In accepting that trust, I find my- 
self strangely compelled to hazard the risk of offending you.” 

“ Offending me ? How ? Pray speak openly.” 

“ In so doing, I must utter the name of Gustave Rameau.” 

Isaura turned pale and recoiled, but she did not speak. 

“ Did he inform me rightly that, in the last interview with 
him three days ago, you expressed a strong desire that the 
engagement between him and yourself should cease, and that 
you only, and with reluctance, suspended your rejection of 
the suit he had pressed on you, in Consequence of his en- 
treaties, and of certain assurances as to the changed direction 
of the talents of which we will assume that he is possessed ?” 

“ Well, well. Monsieur,” exclaimed Isaura, her whole face 
brightening ; “ and you come on the part of Gustave Rameau 
to say that on reflection he does not hold me to our engage- 
ment — that in honor and in conscience I am free ?” . 

“ I see,” answered De Mauleon, smiling, “ that I am par- 
doned already. It would not pain you if such were my 
instructions in the embassy I undertake ?” 

“ Pain me I No. But- 
VOL. III. 


11 


162 


THE PARISIANS. 


But what ?” . 

Must he persist in a course which will break his mother’s 
heart, and make his father deplore the hour that he was born? 
Have you influence over him, M. de Maul4on ? If so, will 
you not exert it for his good ?” 

‘ You interest yourself still in his fate. Mademoiselle?” 

“ How can I do otherwise ? Did I not consent to share it 
when my heart shrank from the thought of our union? And 
now, when, if I understand you rightly, I am free, I cannot 
but think of what was best in him.” 

“Alas! Mademoiselle, he is but one of many — a spoilt 
child of that Circe, imperial Paris. Everywhere I look 
around I see but corruption. It was hidden by the halo 
which corruption itself engenders. The halo is gone, the 
corruption is visible. Where is the old French manhood? 
Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the tongue. 
Were our deeds like our words, Prussia would beg on her 
knee to be a province of France. Gustave is the fit poet 
for this generation. Vanity — desire to be known for some- 
thing, no matter what, no matter by whom — that is the 
Parisian’s leading motive power; — orator, soldier, poet, all 
alike. Utterers of fine phrases; despising knowledge, and 
toil, and discipline ; railing against the Germans as barbarians, 
against th#^’*’ ^enerals as traitors, against God for not taking 
their part. What can be done to weld this mass of hollow 
bubbles into the solid form of a nation — the nation it affects 
to be? What generation can be born out of the unmanly 
race, inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me this 
tirade ; I have been reviewing the battalion I command. As 


THE PARISIANS. 


163 


for Gustave Rameau, — if we survive the siege, and see once 
more a government that can enforce order, and a public that 
will refuse renown for balderdash, — I should not be surprised 
if Gustave Rameau were among the prettiest imitators of 
Lamartine’s early ‘ Meditations.’ Had he been horn under 
Louis XIV. how loyal he would have been ! What sacred 
tragedies in the style of ‘ Athalie’ he would have written, in 
the hope of an audience at Versailles! But I detain you 
from the letter I was charged to deliver to you. I have done 
BO purposely, that I might convince myself that you welcome 
that release which your too delicate sense of honor shrank too 
long from demanding.” 

.Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isaura’s hand, 
and, as if to allow her to read it unobserved, retired to the 
window-recess. 

Isaura glanced over the letter. It ran thus ; — 

“ I feel that it was only to your compassion that I owed 
your consent to my suit. Could I have doubted that before, 
your words when we last met sufficed to convince me. In my 
selfish pain at the moment, I committed a great wrong. I 
would have held you bound to a promise from which you de- 
sired to he free. Grant me pardon for that, and for all the 
faults by which I have offended you. In canceling our en- 
gagement, let me hope that I may rejoice in your friendship, 
your remembrance of me, some gentle and kindly thought. 
My life may henceforth pass out of contact with yours ; hut 
you will ever dwell in my heart, an image pure and holy as 
the saints in whom you may well believe — they are of your 
own kindred.” 


164 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ May I convey to Gustave Rameau any verbal reply to his 
letter ?” asked De Mauleon, turning as she replaced the letter 
on the table. 

“ Only my wishes for his welfare. It might wound him if 
I added, my gratitude for the generous manner in which he 
has interpreted my heart and acceded to his desire.” 

“ Mademoiselle, accept my congratulations. My condolences 
are for the poor girl left to my guardianship. Unhappily, she 
loves this man ; and there are reasons why I cannot withhold 
my consent to her union with him, should he demand it, now 
that, in the letter remitted to you, he has accepted your dis- 
missal. If I can keep him out of all the follies and all the 
evils into which he suffers his vanity to mislead his reason, I 
will do so would I might say, only in compliance with your 
compassionate injunctions. But henceforth the infatuation 
of my ward compels me to take some interest in his career. 
Adieu, Mademoiselle ! I have no fear for your happiness 
now.” 

Left alone, Isaura stood as one transfigured. All the bloom 
of her youth seemed suddenly restored. Round her red lips 
the dimples opened, countless mirrors of one happy smile. “ I 
am free, I am free,” she murmured — “Joyj joy!” and she 
passdd from the room to seek the Venosta, singing clear, sing- 
ing loud, as a bird that escapes from the cage and warbles to 
the heaven it regains the blissful tale of its release. 


THE PARISIANS. 


165 


CHAPTER XIII. 

In proportion to the nearer roar of the besiegers’ cannon, 
and the sharper gripe of famine within the walls, the Paris- 
ians seemed to increase their scorn for the skill of the enemy, 
and their faith in the sanctity of the capital. All false news 
was believed as truth ; all truthful news abhorred as false- 
hood. Listen to the groups round the cafh. “ The Prus- 
sian funds have fallen three per cent, at Berlin,” says a thread- 
bare ghost of the Bourse (he had been a clerk of Louvier s). 
“ Ay,” cries a National Guard, “ read extracts from ‘ La 
Liberte.’ The barbarians are in despair. Nancy is threat- 
ened, Belfort freed. Bourbaki is invading Baden. Our 
fleets are pointing their cannon upon Hamburg. Their 
country endangered, their retreat cut off*, the sole hope of 
Bismarck and his trembling legions is to find a refuge in 
Paris. The increasing fury of the bombardment is a proof 
of their despair.” 

“ In that case,” whispered Savarin to De Br4z6, “ suppose 
we send a flag of truce to Versailles with a message from 
Trochu that, on disgorging their conquests, ceding the left 
bank of the Rhine, and paying the expenses of the war, 
Paris, ever magnanimous to the vanquished, will allow the 
Prussians to retite.” 

“ The Prussians ! Retire I” cried Edgar Perrier, catching 
the last word and glancing fiercely at Savarin. “What 




THE PARISIANS. 


Prussian spy have we among us? Not one of the bar- 
barians shall escape. We have but to dismiss the traitors 
who have usurped the government, proclaim the Commune 
and the rights of labor, and we give birth to a Hercules 
that even in its cradle can strangle the vipers.” 

Edgar Perrier was the sole member of his political party 
among the group which he thus addressed ; but such was the 
terror which the Communists already began to inspire among, 
the bourgeoisie that no one volunteered a reply. Savarin 
linked his arm in De Breze’s, and prudently drew him off. 

“ I suspect,” said the former, “ that we shall soon have 
worse calamities to endure than the Prussian ohus and the 
black loaf. The Communists will have their day.” 

“ I shall be in my grave before then,” said De Brez6, in 
hollow accents. “ It is twenty-four hours since I spent my 
last fifty sous on the purchase of a rat, and I burnt the legs 
of my bedstead for the fuel by which that quadruped was 
roasted.” 

^^Entre nous, my poor friend, I am much in the same con- 
dition,” said Savarin, with a ghastly attempt at his old 
pleasant laugh. “ See how I am shrunken ! My wife would 
be unfaithful to the Savarin of her dreams if she accepted a 
kiss from the slender gallant you behold in me. But I 
thought you were in the National Guard, and therefore had 
not to vanish into air.” 

“ I was a National Guard, but I could not stand the hard- 
ships ; and, being above the age, I obtained my exemption. 
As to pay, I was then too proud to claim my wage of one 
franc twenty -five centimes. I should not be too proud noW* 


THE PARISIANS. 


167 


All, blessed be Heaven ! here comes Lemercier ; he owes me 
a dinner — he shall pay it. Bon-jmir^ my dear Frederic I 
How handsome you look in your hipi! Your uniform is 
brilliantly fresh from the soil of powder. What a contrast to 
the tatterdemalions of the Line !” 

“ I fear,” said Lemercier, ruefully, “ that my costume will 
not look so well a day or two hence. I have just had news 
that will no doubt seem very glorious — in the newspapei*s. 
But then newspapers are not subjected to cannon-balls.” 

“ What do you mean ?” answered He Brez4. 

“ I met, as I emerged from my apartment a few minutes 
ago, that fire-eater Victor de Mauleon, who always contrives 
to know what passes at headquarters. He told me that 
preparations are being made for a great sortie. Most prob- 
ably the announcement will appear in a proclamation to- 
morrow, and our troops march forth to-morrow night. The 
National Guard (fools and asses who have been yelling out 
for decisive action) are to have their wish, and to be placed 
in the van of battle, — among the foremost, the battalion in 
which I am enrolled. Should this be our last meeting on 
earth, say that Frederic Lemercier has finished his part in 
life with Sclaty 

“ Gallant friend,” said Pe Br^z4, feebly seizing him by the 
arm, “ if it be true that thy itiortal career is menaced, die as 
thou hast lived. An honest man leaves no debt unpaid. 
Thou owest me a dinner.” 

<<Alas! ask of me what is possible. I will give thee three, 
however, if I survive and regain my rentes. But to-day I 
have not even a mouse to share with Fox.” 


168 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Fox lives, tlien ?” cried De Br4ze, with sparkling hungry 
eyes. 

“ Yes. At present he is making the experiment how long 
an animal can live without food.” 

“ Have mercy upon him, poor beast ! Terminate his pangs 
by a noble death. Let him save thy friends and thyself from 
starving. For myself alone I do not plead; I am but an 
amateur in polite literature. But Savarin, the illustrious 
Savarin, — in criticism the French Longinus — in poetry the 
Parisian Horace — in social life the genius of gayety in panta- 
loons, — contemplate his attenuated frame! Shall he perish 
for want of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy 
larder ? I appeal to thy heart, thy conscience, thy patriot- 
ism. What, in the eyes of France, are a thousand Foxes 
compared to a single Savarin ?” 

“ At this moment,” sighed Savarin, “ I could swallow any- 
thing, however nauseous, even thy flattery, De Brez6. But, 
my friend Frederic, thou goest into battle — what will become 
of Fox if thou fall ? Will he not be devoured by strangers ? 
Surely it were a sweeter thought to his faithful heart to 
furnish a repast to thy friends ? — his virtues acknowledged, 
his memory blest 1” 

“ Thou dost look very lean, my poor Savarin ! And how 
hospitable thou wert when yet plump 1” said Frederic, 
pathetically. “And certainly, if I live, Fox will starve; if 
I am slain. Fox will be eaten. Yet, poor Fox, dear Fox, who 
lay on my breast when I was frostbitten! No; I have not 
the heart to order him to the spit for you. Urge it not.” 

“I will save thee that pang,” cried De Brez4. “We are 


THE PARISIANS. 


169 


close by tby rooms. Excuse me for a moment : I will run in 
and instruct tby honne." 

So saying, be sprang forward with an elasticity of step 
wbicb no one could have anticipated from bis previous 
languor. Frederic would bave followed, but Savarin . clung 
to bim, whimpering, “ Stay ; I shall fall like an empty sack, 
without the support of thine arm, young hero. Pooh I of 
course De Breze is only joking — a pleasant joke. Hist I — 
a secret: he has moneys, and means to give us once more a 
dinner at bis own cost, pretending that we dine on tby dog. 
He was planning this when thou earnest up. Let bim bave 
bis joke, and we shall bave a festin de Balthasar.^' 

“ Hein !” said Frederic, doubtfully ; “ thou art sure he baa 
no designs upon Fox?” 

“ Certainly not, except in regaling us. Donkey is not bad, 
but it is fourteen francs a pound. A pullet is excellent, but 
it is thirty francs. Trust to De Brez6 ; we shall bave donkey 
and pullet, and Fox shall feast upon the remains.” 

Before Frederic could reply, the two men were jostled and 
swept On by a sudden rush of a noisy crowd in their rear. 
They could but distinguish the words — Glorious news- 
victory — Faidherbe — Chanzy. But these words were suffi- 
cient to induce them to join willingly in the rush. They 
forgot their hunger ; they forgot Fox. As they were hurried 
on, they learned that there was a report of a complete defeat 
of the Prussians by Faidherbe near Amiens, — of a still more 
decided one on the Loire by Chanzy. These generals, with 
armies flushed with triumph, were pressing on towards Paris 
to accelerate the destruction of the hated Germans. How 
VOL. III.— H 


170 


THE PARISIANS. 


the report arose no one exactly knew. All believed it, and 
were making their way to the Hotel de Ville to hear it 
formally confirmed. 

Alas ! before they got there they were met by another crowd 
returning, dejected but angry. No such news had reached 
the government. Chanzy and Faidherbe were no doubt fight- 
ing bravely, with every probability of success ; but 

The Parisian imagination required no more. “We should 
always be defeating the enemy,” said Savarin, “if there were 
not always a hut;'" and his audience, who, had he so ex- 
pressed himself ten minutes before, would have torn him to 
pieces, now applauded the epigram, and, with execrations on 
Trochu, mingled with many a peal of painful sarcastic laugh- 
ter, vociferated and dispersed. 

As the two friends sauntered back towards the part of the 
Boulevards on which De Br4z4 had parted company with 
them, Savarin quitted Lemercier suddenly, and crossed the 
street to accost a small party of two ladies and two men who 
were on their way to the Madeleine. While he was ex- 
changing a few words with them, a young couple, arm in arm, 
passed by Lemercier, — the man in the uniform of the Na- 
tional Guard— uniform as unsullied as Frederic’s, bUt with as 
little of a military air as can well be conceived. His gait 
was slouching ; his head bent downwards. He did not seem 
to listen to his companion, who was talking with quickness 
and vivacity, her fair face radiant with smiles. Lemercier 
looked after them as they passed by. “ Sur mon amej' mut- 
tered Frederic to himself, “ surely that is la heUe Julie ; and 
she has got back her truant poet at last I” 


THE PARISIANS. 


171 


While Lemercier thus soliloquized, Grustave, still looking 
down, was led across the street by his fair companion, and 
into the midst of the little group with whom Savarin had 
paused to speak. Accidentally brushing against Savarin him- 
self, he raised his eyes with a start, about to mutter some con- 
ventional apology, when Julie felt the arm on which she leant 
tremble nervously. Before him stood Isaura, the Countess 
de Vandemar by her side; her two other companions, Eaoul 
and the Abb4 Vertpr4, a step or two behind. 

Gustave uncovered, bowed low, and stood mute and still for 
a moment, paralyzed by surprise and the chill of a painful 
shame. 

Julie’s watchful eyes, following his, fixed themselves on the 
same face. On the instant she divined the truth. She be- 
held her to whom she had owed months of jealous agony, and 
over whom, poor child, she thought she had achieved a tri- 
umph. But the girl’s heart was so instinctively good that 
the sense of triumph was merged in a sense of compassion. 
Her rival had lost Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave 
was the loss of all that makes life worth having. On her 
part, Isaura was moved not only by the beauty of Julie’s 
countenance, but still more by the childlike ingenuousness of 
its expression. 

So, for the first time in their lives, met the child and the 
step-child of Louise Duval, — each so deserted, each so left 
alone and inexperienced amid the perils of the world, with 
fiites so different, typifying orders of Womanhood so opposed. 
Isaura was naturally the first to break the silence that weighed 
like a sensible load on all present. 


172 


THE PARISIANS. 


She advanced towards Rameau, with sincere kindness in 
her look and tone. 

“ Accept my congratulations,’’ she said, with a grave 
smile. “ Your mother informed me last evening of your 
nuptials. Without doubt I see Madame Gustave Rameau 
— and she extended her hand towards Julie. The poor On- 
dine shrank back for a moment, blushing up to her temples. 
It was the first hand which a woman of spotless character had 
extended to her since she had lost the protection of Madame 
Surville. She touched it timidly, humbly, then drew her 
bridegroom on, and, with head more downcast than Gustave, 
passed through the group without a word. 

She did not speak to Gustave till they were out of sight 
and hearing of those they had left. Then, pressing his arm 
passionately, she said, “ And that is the demoiselle thou hast 
resigned for me ! Do not deny it. I am so glad to have 
seen her ; it has done me so much good. How it has deep- 
ened, purified, my love for thee ! I have but one return to 
make ; but that is my whole life. Thou shalt never have 
cause to blame me — never — never !” 

Savarin looked very grave and thoughtful when he rejoined 
Lemevcier. 

“ Can I believe my eyes ?” said Frederic. “ Surely that 
was Julie Gaumartin leaning on Gustave Rameau’s arm I 
A.nd had he the assurance, so accompanied, to salute Madame 
ie Vandemar, and Mademoiselle Cicogna, to whom I under- 
stood he was affianced ? Nay, did I not see Mademoiselle 
shake hands with the Ondine ? or am I under one of the 
illusions which famine is said to engender in the brain ?” 


THE PARISIANS. 


173 


“ I have not strength now to answer all these interroga- 
tives. I have a story to tell ; but I keep it for dinner. Let 
us hasten to thy apartment. De Brez6 is doubtless there 
waiting us.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Unprescient of the perils that awaited him, absorbed in 
the sense of existing discomfort, cold, and hunger. Pox lifted 
his mournful visage from his master’s dressing-gown, in which 
he had encoiled his shivering frame, on the entrance of De 
Breze and the concierge of the house in which Lemercier 
had his apartment. Recognizing the Vicomte as one of his 
master’s acquaintances, he checked the first impulse that 
prompted him to essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, 
with a petulant whine, to be extracted from his covering and 
held in the arms of the murderous visitor. 

Dieu des dieuxT ejaculated De Breze, “how light the 
poor beast has become!” Here he pinched the sides and 
thighs of the victim. “ Still,” he said, “ there is some flesh 
yet ou these bones. You may grill the paws, fricasser the 
shoulders, and roast the rest. The rognons and the head 
accept for yourself as a perquisite.” Here he transferred 
Fox to the arms of the concierge^ adding, “ Vite au hesogne^ 
mon amV 

“ Yes, Monsieur. I must be quick about it while my wife 
is absent. She has a faiblesse for the brute. He must be on 
the spit before she returns.” 


174 


THE PARISIANS. 


“ Be it so ; and on the table in an hour — five o’clock pre- 
cisely — I am famished.” 

The concierge disappeared with Fox. De Br4ze then 
amused himself by searching into Frederic’s cupboards and 
buffets, from which he produced a cloth and utensils neces- 
sary for the repast. These he arranged with great neatness^ 
and awaited in patience the moment of participation in the 
feast. 

The hour of five had struck before Savarin and Frederic 
entered the salon; and at their sight De Breze dashed to 
the staircase and called out to the concierge to serve the 
dinner. 

Frederic, though' unconscious of the Thyestean nature of 
the banquet, still looked round for the dog; and, not per- 
ceiving him, began to call out, “ Fox ! Fox ! where hast thou 
hidden thyself?” 

“ Tranquillize yourself,” said De Breze. “ Do not suppose 
that I have not .... 


Note by the Author’s Son.* — The hand that wrote thus far 
has left unwritten the last scene of the tragedy of poor Fox. In 
the deep where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrevo- 
cably buried the humor and the pathos of this cynophagous 
banquet. One detail of it, however, which the author imparted, 
to his son, may here be faintly indicated. Let the sympathizing 
reader recognize all that is dramatic in the conflict between 
hunger and affection ; let him recall to mind the lachrymose 
loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after bliss- 


* See also Prefatory Note. 


THE PARISIANS. 


175 


fully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will 
hope, than that of these besieged banqueters ; and then, though 
unaided by the fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he 
may perhaps imagine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes 
of the kind-hearted Frederic, as they contemplated the well- 
picked bones of his sacrificed favorite on the platter before him ; 
which he pushes away, sighing, “Ah, poor Fox I how he would 
have enjoyed those bones!” 

The chapter immediately following this one also remains un- 
finished. It was not intended to close the narrative thus left 
uncompleted ; but of those many and so various works which 
have not unworthily associated with almost every department 
of literature the name of a single English writer, it is Chapter 
THE Last. Had the author lived to-finish it, he would doubtless 
have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its most epic episode, 
by here describing the mighty combat between those two princes 
of the Parisian Bourse, the magnanimous Duplessis and the re- 
doubtable Louvier. Among the few other pages of the book 
which have been left unwritten we must also reckon with regret 
some page descriptive of the reconciliation between Graham 
Vane and Isaura Cicogna; but, fortunately for the satisfaction 
of every reader who may have followed thus far the fortunes of 
“ The Parisians,” all that our curiosity is chiefly interested to 
learn has been recorded in the Envois which was written before 
the completion of the novel. 

We know not, indeed, what has become of those two Parisian 
types of a Beauty not of Holiness, the poor vain Poet of the 
Fav4, and the good-hearted Ondine of the Gutter. It is obvious, 
from the absence of all allusion to them in Lemercier’s letter to 
Vane, that they had passed out of the narrative before that letter 
was written. We must suppose the catastrophe of their fates to 
have been described, in some preceding chapter, by the author 
himself; who would assuredly not have left M. Gustave Rameau 
in permanent possession of his ill-merited and ill-ministered 
fortune. That French representative of the appropriately popu- 
lar poetry of modern ideas, which prefers “ the roses and rap- 
tures of vice” to “the lilies and languors of virtue,” cannot have 
been irredeemably reconciled by the sweet savors of the domestic 


176 


THE PARISIANS. 


pot-au-feu, even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated 
disreputability, to any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal 
social emancipation from the personal proprieties. If poor Julie 
Caumartin has perished in the siege of Paris, with all the grace 
of a self-wrought redemption still upon her, we shall doubtless 
deem her fate a happier one than any she could have found in 
prolonged existence as Madame Rameau ; and a certain modicum 
of this world’s good things will, in that case, have been rescued 
for worthier employment by Graham Vane. To that assurance 
nothing but Lemercier’s description of the fate of Victor do 
Maul6on (which will be found in the Envoi) need be added for 
the satisfaction of our sense of poetic justice; and if on the 
mimic stage, from which they now disappear, all these puppets ^ 
have rightly played their parts in the drama of an empire’s fall, 
each will have helped ‘‘ to point a moral” as well as to “adorn a 
tale.” Valete et plaudite! L. 


CHAPTER THE LAST. 

Among the refugees which the convoi from Versailles dis- 
gorged on the Paris station were two men, who, in pushing 
through the crowd, came suddenly face to face with each 
other. ^ 

“Aha! Bon-Jour, M. Duplessis,” said a burly voice. 

• “ Bon-Jour, M. Louvier,” replied Duplessis. 

“ How long have you left Bretagne ?” 

“ On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in 
order to be able to enter Paris the first day its gates were 
open. And you — where have, you been ?” 

“ In London.” , . 


THE PARISIANS. 


177 


‘‘All! in London!” said Duplessis, paling. “I knew! 
had an enemy there.” 

“ Enemy ! I ? Bah ! my dear Monsieur. What makes you 
think me your enemy?” 

“ I remember your threats.” 

“ A propos of Bochebriant. By the way, when would it 
be convenient to you and the dear Marquis to let me into 
prompt possession of that property ? You can no longer pre- 
tend to buy it as a dot for Mademoiselle Yalerie.” 

“ I know not that yet. It is true that all the financial 
operations Mtempted by my agent in London have failed. 
But I may recover myself yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In 
the mean time, we have still six months before us ; for, as 
you will find — -if you know it not already — the interest due 

to you has been lodged with Messrs. of , and you 

cannot foreclose, even if the law did not take into considera- 
tion the national calamities as between debtor and creditor.” 

“ Quite true. But if you cannot buy the property it must 
pass into my hands in a very short time. And you and the 
Marquis had better come to an amicable arrangement with 
me. A propos, I read in the ‘ Times’ newspaper that Alain 
was among the wounded in the sortie of December.” 

“Yes; we learnt that through a pigeon-post. We were 
iifraid .... 


VOL. III.— H* 


12 


178 


THE PARISIANS. 


L’ ENVOI. 

The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate 
is virtually closed with the preceding chapter; though I 
rejoice to think that what may be called its plot does not find 
its denouement amidst the crimes and the frenzy of the Guerre 
.des Communeaux. Fit subjects these, indeed, for the social 
annalist in times to come. When crimes that outrage 
humanity have their motive or their excuse in principles 
that demand the demolition of all upon which the civilization 
of Europe has its basis — worship, property, and marriage — 
in order to reconstruct a new civilization adapted to a new 
humanity, it is scarcely possible for the serenest contemporary 
to keep his mind in that state of abstract reasoning with 
which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some existent 
good. For my part, I believe that throughout the whole 
known history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is 
most misled and conscience most perverted, there runs visible, 
though fine and threadlike, the chain of destiny, which has 
its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-good ; that 
in the wildest illusions by which multitudes are frenzied, there 
may be detected gleams of prophetic truths ; that in the 
fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, charac- 
terize a peculiar epoch under abnormal circumstances, there 
might be found instincts or aspirations towards some social 


THE PARISIANS. 


179 


virtues to be realized ages afterwards by happier generations, 
all tending to save man from despair of the future, were the 
whole society to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the 
abjuration of Soul and the denial of God, because all irresisti- 
bly establishing that yearning towards an unseen future which 
is the leading attribute of soul, evincing the government of a 
divine Thought which, evolves out of the discords of one age 
the harmonies of another, and, in the world within us as in 
the world without, enforces upon every unclouded reason the 
distinction between Providence and Chance. 

The account subjoined may suflGice to say all that rests to be 
said of those individuals in whose fate, apart from the events 
or personages that belong to graver history, the reader of 
this work may have conceived an interest. It is trans- 
lated from the letter of Frederic Lemerciei to Graham 
Vane, dated June — r— , a month after the defeat of the 
Communists. 

“ Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honor 
but fail to pronounce, accept my cordial thanks for your in- 
terest in such remains of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive 
the ravages of famine. Equality, Brotherhood, Petroleum, and 
the Bights of Labor. I did not desert my Paris when M. 
Thiers, ^ parmula non hene relicta^ led his sagacious friends 
and his valiant troops to the groves of Versailles, and con- 
fided to us unarmed citizens the preservation of order and 
property from the insurgents whom he left in possession of 
our forts and cannon. I felt spellbound by the interest of the 
siimtre milodrame^ with its quick succession of scenic effects 
and the metropolis of the world for its stage. Taught by 


180 


THE PARISIANS. 


experience, I did not aspire to be an actor ; and even as a 
spectator, I took care neither to hiss nor applaud. Inaitating 
your happy England, I observed a strict neutrality, and, safe 
myself from danger, left my best friends to the care of the 
gods. 

“ As to political questions, I dare not commit myself to a 
conjecture. At this rouge-et-noir table, all I can say is, that 
-whichever card turns up, it is either a red or a black one. 
One gamester gains for the moment by the loss of the other ; 
the table eventually ruins both. 

“ No one believes that the present form of government can 
last; every one differs as to that which can. Raoul de Van- 
demar is immovably convinced of the restoration of the 
Bourbons. Savarin is meditating a new journal devoted to 
the cause of the Count of Paris. De Brez4 and the old 
Count de Passy, having in turn espoused and opposed every 
previous form of government, naturally go in for a perfectly 
novel experiment, and are for constitutional dictatorship under 
the Due d’Aumale, which he is to hold at his own pleasure, 
and ultimately resign to his nephew the Count, under the 
mild title of a constitutional king ; — that is, if it ever suits 
the pleasure of a dictator to depose himself. To me this 
seems the wildest of notions. If the Due’s administration 
were successful, the French would insist on keeping it ; and 
if the uncle were unsuccessful, the nephew would not have a 
chance. Duplessis retains his faith in the Imperial dynasty ; 
and that Imperialist party is much stronger than it appears 
on the surface. So many of the bourgeoisie recall with a 
sigh eighteen years of prosperous trade; so many of the 


THE PARISIANS. 


181 


military officers, so many of the civil officials, identify their 
career with the Napoleonic favor ; and so many of the Priest* 
hood, abhorring the Republic, always liable to pass into the 
hands of those who assail religion, — unwilling to admit the 
claim of the Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire. 

“ But I will tell you one secret. I and all the quiet folks 
like me (we are more numerous than any one violent faction) 
are willing to accept any form of government by which we 
have the best chance of keeping our coats on our backs. 
LiherU^ Egalite^ Fraterniti are gone quite out of fashion; 

and Mademoiselle has abandoned her great chant of the 

Marseillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences 
by her pathetic delivery of ‘0 Richard! 0 mon roil' 

“ Now about the other friends of whom you ask for news. 

“ Wonders will never cease. Louvier and Duplessis are no 
longer deadly rivals. They have become sworn friends, and 
are meditating a great speculation in common, to commence 
as soon as the Prussian debt is paid off. Victor de Mauleon 
brought about this reconciliation in a single inteiwiew during 
the brief interregnum between the Peace and the Guerre des 
Communeavx. You know how sternly Louvier was bent 
upon seizing Alain de Rochebriant's estates. Can you con- 
ceive the true cause? Can you imagine it possible that a 
hardened money-maker like Louvier should ever allow himself 
to be actuated, one way or the other, by the romance of a 
sentimental wrong ? Yet so it was. It seems that many years 
a "0 he was desperately in love with a girl who disappeared 
from his life, and whom he believed to have been seduced by 
the late Marquis de Rochebriant. It was in revenge for this 


182 


THE PARISIANS. 


supposed crime that he had made himself the principal 
mortgagee of the late Marquis, and, visiting the sins of the 
father on the son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly 
interest, made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, upon terms 
apparently the most generous. The demon soon showed his 
griffe^ and was about to foreclose, when Duplessis came to 
Alain’s relief; and Kochebriant was to be Valerie’s dot on 
her marriage with Alain. The Prussian war, of course, 
suspended all such plans, pecuniary and matrimonial. Du- 
plessis, whose resources were terribly crippled by the war, 
attempted operations in London with a view of raising the 
sum necessary to pay off the mortgage ; — found himself 
strangely frustrated and baffled. Louvier was in London, 
and defeated his rival’s agent in every speculation. It became 
impossible for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage. The two 
men came to Paris with the peace. Louvier determined both 
to seize the Breton lands and to complete the ruin of Du- 
plessis ; when he learned from De Maul4on that he had spent 
half his life in a baseless illusion ; that Alain’s father was 
innocent of the crime for which his son was to suffer ; — and 
Victor, with that strange power over men’s minds which was 
so peculiar to him, talked Louvier into mercy, if not into 
repentance. In short, the mortgage is to be paid off by 
installments at the convenience of Duplessis. Alain’s mar- 
riage with Val4rie is to take place in a few weeks. The 
fournisseurs are already gone to fit up the old chateau for the 
bride, and Louvier is invited to the wedding;. 

“ I have all this story from Alain, and from Duplessis him- 
self. I tell the tale as ’twas told to me, with all the gloss of 


THE PARISIANS. 


183 


sentiment upon its woof. But, between ourselves, I am too 
Parisian not to be skeptical as to the unalloyed amiability of 
sudden conversions. And I suspect that Louvier was no 
longer in a condition to indulge in the unprofitable whim of 
turning rural seigneur. He had sunk large sums and incurred 
great liabilities in the new Street to be called after his name ; 
and that street has been twice ravaged, first by the Prussian 
siege, and next by the Guerre des Communeaux ; and I can 
detect many reasons why Louvier should deem it prudent not 
only to withdraw from the Rochebriant seizure, and make 
sure of peacefully recovering the capital lent on it, but 
establishing joint interest and quasi partnership with a finan- 
cier so brilliant and successful as Armand Duplessis has 
hitherto been. 

“ Alain himself is not quite recovered from his wound, and 
is now at Rochebriant, nursed by his aunt and Valerie. I 
have promised to visit him next week. Raoul de Vandemar 
is still at Paris with his mother, saying there is no place 
where one Christian man can be of such service. The old 
Count declines to come back, saying there is no place where a 
philosopher can be in such danger. 

“ I reserve as my last communication, in reply to your 
questions, that which is the gravest. You say that you saw 
in the public journals brief notice of the assassination of 
Victor de Maul4oii ; and you ask for such authentic particu- 
lars as I can give of that event, and of the motives of the 
assassin. 

“I need not, of course, tell you how bravely the poor 
Vicomte behaved throughout the siege; but he made many 


184 


THE PARISIANS. 


enemies among the worst members of the National Guard by 
the severity of his discipline ; and had he been caught by the 
mob the same day as Clement Thomas, who committed the 
same offense, would have certainly shared the fate of that 
general. Though elected a depute^ he remained at Paris a 
few days after Thiers & Co. left it, in the hope of persuading 
the party of Order, including then no small portion of the 
National Guard, to take prompt and vigorous measures to 
defend the city against the Communists. Indignant at their 
pusillanimity, he then escaped to Versailles. There he more 
than confirmed the high reputation he had acquired during 
the siege, and impressed the ablest public men with the belief 
that he was destined to take a very leading part in the strife 
of party. When the Versailles troops entered Paris, he was, 
of course, among them in command of a battalion. 

“He escaped safe through that horrible war of barricades, 
though no man more courted danger. He inspired his men 
with his own courage. It was not till the revolt was quenched 
on the evening of the 28th May that he met his death. The 
Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, were very prompt 
in seizing and shooting at once every passenger who looked 
like a foe. Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon 
one of these victims, and were hurrying him into the next 
street for execution, when, catching sight of the Vicomte, he 
screamed out, ‘ Lebeau, save me !’ 

“ At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, arrested his 
soldiers, cried, ‘ This man is innocent — a harmless physician. 
I answer for him.’ As he thus spoke, a wounded Com- 
munist, lying in the gutter amidst a heap of the slain, 


THE PARISIANS. 


185 


dragged himself up, reeled towards De Mauleon, plunged a 
knife between liis shoulders, and dropped down dead. 

“ The Vicomte was carried into a neighboring house, from 
all the windows of which the tricolor was suspended ; and the 
Medecin whom he had just saved from summary execution 
examined and dressed his wound. The Vicomte lingered for 
more than an hour, but expired in the elfort to utter some 
words, the sense of which those about him endeavored in vain 
to seize. 

“ It was from the Medecin that the name of the assassin 
and the motive for the crime were ascertained. The miscreant 
was a Red Republican and Socialist, named Armand Monnier. 
He had been a very skillful workman, and earning, as such, 
high wages. Rut he thought fit to become an active revolu- 
tionary politician, first led into schemes for upsetting the 
world by the existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted 
on him one woman who ran away from him, but being still 
legally his wife, forbade him to marry another woman with 
whom he lived, and to whom he seems to have been passion- 
ately attached. 

“ These schemes, however, he did not put into any positive 
practice till he fell in with a certain Jean Lebeau, who exer- 
cised great influence over him, and by whom he was admitted 
into one of the secret revolutionary societies which had for 
their object the overthrow of the Empire. After that time 
his head became turned. The fall of the Empire put an end 
to the society he had joined: Lebeau dissolved it. During 
the siege Monnier was a sort of leader among the ouvrwrs.; 
but as it advanced and famine commenced, he contracted the 


186 


THE PARISIANS. 


habit of intoxication. His children died of cold and hunger. 
The woman he lived with followed them to the grave. Then 
he seems to have become a ferocious madman, and to have 
been implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists. He 
cherished a wild desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, 
to whom he attributed all his calamities, and by whom, he 
said, his brother had been shot in the sortie of December. 

“Here comes the strange part of the story. This Jean 
Lebeau is alleged to have been one and the same person with 
Victor de Mauleon. The Medecin I have named, and who 
is well known in Belleville and Montmartre as the Midecin des 
Pauvres^ confesses that he belonged to the secret society 
organized by Lebeau ; that the disguise the Vicomte assumed 
was so complete, that he should not have recognized his 
identity with the conspirator but for an accident. During 
the latter time of the bombardment, he, the Midecin. des 
Pauvres, was on the eastern ramparts, and his attention was 
suddenly called to a man mortally wounded by the splinter of 
a shell. While examining the nature of the wound, De 
Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came to the spot. 
The dying man said, ‘ M. le Vicomte, you owe me a service. 
My name is Marc Le Roux. I was on the police before the 
war. When M. de Mauleon reassumed his station, and was 
making himself obnoxious to the Emperor, I might have 
denounced him as Jean Lebeau the conspirator. I did not. 
The siege has reduced me to want. I have a child at home 
— a pet. Don’t let her starve.’ ‘ I will see to her,’ said the 
Vicomte. Before we could get the man into the ambulance 
cart he expired. 


THE PARISIANS. 


187 


“ The Medecin who told this story I had the curiosity to 
see. myself, and cross-question. I own I believe his state- 
ment. Whether De Mauldon did or did not conspire against 
a fallen dynasty, to which he owed no allegiance, can little if 
at all injure the reputation he has left behind of a very 
remarkable man — of great courage and great ability — who 
might have had a splendid career if he had survived. But, 
as Savarin says truly, the first bodies which the car of revo- 
lution crushes down are those which first harness themselves 
to it. 

“Among Be Maul^on’s papers is the programme of a 
constitution fitted for France. How it got into Savarin’s 
hands I know not. Be Maul^on left no will, and no rela- 
tions came forward to claim his papers. I asked Savarin to 
give me the heads of the plan, which he did. They are as 
follows : — 

“ ‘ The American republic is the sole one worth studying, 
for it has lasted. The causes of its duration are in the checks 
to democratic fickleness and disorder. 1st, No law affecting the 
Constitution can be altered without the consent of two-thirds 
of Congress. 2d, To counteract the impulses natural to a 
popular Assembly chosen by universal suffrage, the greater 
legislative powers, especially in foreign affairs, are vested in 
the Senate, which has even executive as well as legislative 
functions. 3d, The chief of the State, having elected his 
government, can maintain it independent of hostile majorities 
in either Assembly. 

“ These three principles of safety to form the basis of any 
new constitution for France. 


188 


THE PARISIANS. 


a (■ For France it is essential that the chief magistrate, 
under whatever title he assume, should he as irresponsible as 
an English sovereign. Therefore he should not preside at his 
councils ; he should not lead his armies. The day for personal 
government is gone, even in Prussia. The safety for order in 
a State is, that when things go wrong the Ministry changes, 
the State remains the same. In Europe, Kepublican institu- 
tions are safer where the chief magistrate is hereditary than 
where elective.’ • 

“ Savarin says these axioms are carried out at length, and 
argued with great ability. 

“ I am very grateful for your proffered hospitalities in Eng- 
land. Some day I shall accept them, viz., whenever I decide 
on domestic life, and the calm of the conjugal foyer, I have 
a penchant for an English Mees, and am not exacting as to the 
dot. Thirty thousand livres sterling would satisfy me — a trifle, 
I believe, to you rich islanders. 

“ Meanwhile I am naturally compelled to make up for the 
miseries of that horrible siege. Certain moralizing journals 
tell us that, sobered by misfortune, the Parisians are going to 
turn over a new leaf, become studious and reflective, despise 
pleasure and luxury, and live like German professors. Don’t 
believe a word of it. My conviction is that, whatever may be 
said as to our frivolity, extravagance, etc., under the Empire, 
we shall be just the same under any form of government — 
the bravest, the most timid, the most ferocious, the kindest- 
hearted, the most irrational, the most intelligent,- the most 
contradictory, the most consistent people whom Jove, taking 
counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars and the Furies, ever 


THE PARISIANS. 


189 


created for the delight and terror of the world ; — in a word, 
the Parisians. — Votre tout devout, 

“ Frederic Lemercier.” 


It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the close 
of the autumn of 1871. Upon the part of the craggy shore, to 
the left of the town, on which her first perusal of the loveliest 
poem in which the romance of Christian heroism has ever com- 
bined elevation of thought with silvery delicacies of speech, had 
charmed her childhood, reclined the young bride of Graham 
Vane. They were in the first month of their marriage. Isaura 
had not yet recovered from the efiects of all that had preyed 
upon her life, from the hour in which she had deemed that in 
her pursuit of fame she had lost the love that had colored her 
genius and inspired her dreams, to that in which . . . 

The physicians consulted agreed in insisting on her passing 
the winter in a southern climate; and after their wedding, 
which took place in Florence, they thus came to Sorrento. 

As Isaura is seated on the small smoothed rocklet, Graham 
reclines at her feet, his face upturned to hers with an inex- 
pressible wistful anxiety in his impassioned tenderness. “ You 
are sure you feel better and stronge;- since we have been here?” 


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